Still can’t believe Drafts can’t be turned off. It’s been a feature for months now and I still find having the chat I’m working on fly to the top of the list as confusing and distracting as it was on day one.
Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible
531–540 of 1001 posts
Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible
#532It seems pretty cool to me to work at a place where so many people use and care about your work, but... It must suck to just open Hacker News, or even a link someone sent to you, and be greeted with someone off-handedly dismissing your work as terrible.
Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible
#533I have contacted them, and they replied me with this Lucas (Slack) Nov 20, 9:15 PM PST Hi there, Thank you for taking the time to write in and provide this feedback. I apologize for the disruption to your existing workflows. Our aim is to build an editor that works for all Slack users to better format their messages and clearly communicate in channels, regardless of their technical expertise. While we are taking all…
I've been using wee_slack.py for some time; if you can add an application token and prefer the weechat UI then it's an appreciable option, but the issues I've had regarding inputting code are not necessarily fixed there since weechat doesn't take multi-line input. :(
Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible
#534Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The goal is for workflows to evolve This exchange is a pretty good summation of one of the biggest purely practical reasons why I'm so obsessive about tools, and why I'm so willing to put up with the initial cost of learning systems like Linux and Vim/Emacs. Outside of fundamentally better workflow improvements, most professional fields don't randomly change their tools. If you gave a professional artist a new penc…
If we embraced this philosophy none of us would be typing quickly on touch screen phones. Steve Jobs knew it beat a physical keyboard, and when pressed by people who complained about the new iPhone's touchscreen keyboard, he grinned and said "You'll get used to it." And oh boy, did they ever.
> And oh boy, did they ever.
I cannot wait until the MBP 2025 with the whole keyboard replaced by the touchbar..
Who needs tactile feedback?
Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible
#535Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMHO they missed the fact that power users would have preferred the old behavior and didn't provide the opportunity to switch between the two behaviors
This. Power users (normally engineers) drove Slack usage at my last company. I'm now in an org that uses Teams and all the engineers want to use Slack. Likely won't happen but it's important to note that this feature isn't just annoying a small segment of users, it's annoying the small segment that are most vocal about adopting Slack. And who due to economic power arguably have more influence.
The problem with that is Slack no longer needs a small segment of vocal users. They used to, but now they're a huge established company with plenty of service contracts across tons of industries.
Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible
#536I feel like a grumpy man yelling about updates like this, but this has been really badly done. Why oh why does it compromise on the existing "power" users usage so that it can provide click boxes for people who will never use it...
Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible
#537Earlier quoted context omitted.
And this ladies and gentlemen is the over reaction of the year!
In my company (not a small one) and in any previous ones, I’ve never even thought that people could be afraid of giving honest feedback. I’ve seen internal feedback causing change, I’ve also seen it being ignored (sometimes to be listened to later after all, sometimes it turned out that things weren’t as bad as they seemed), but I’ve never perceived any potential for negative repercussions. So if that is indeed the c…
Uh, that’s actual the default behaviour I’ve witnessed at small and large companies I’ve worked for: complain or be critical of the shiny bright path that executives push you onto, and you’ll be branded a nuisance to suppress. Rule n.1 of survival has always been “don’t rock the boat”. The one time I felt safe enough to speak my mind without filters, I eventually paid the price for it.
Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible
#538In their defence (not the defence of the WYSIWYG box itself) - they quite likely have done lots of user testing that has shown clear desirability, improved value to user, improved usability, etc etc. You have to remember Slack's target persona is probably no longer the Engineer (If it ever was) - it's more likely a much less tech-savvy employee who finds WYSIWYG editors very handy to create rich text inputs. I guess…
> they quite likely have done lots of user testing that has shown clear desirability, improved value to user, improved usability I have never worked at a company that did user testing or if they did it was always done in a way or interpreted in a way to back up the designer's opinion. I don't think I've once in my entire 40 yr career seen a designer test with users, find out something was bad, and change their design…
I worked for a small UK coupon company and our UX team done it on a regular basis.
Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible
#539Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the life of me, I cannot figure out how to create two adjacent but separate code blocks. ``` one ``` ``` two ``` I've tried and tried.
You can exit a code block by hitting Command Option Shift C. I found this out by hovering over the code block icon in the bar below the editor box. The trick seems to be to add a blank final line, otherwise, it will not include the last line you typed in a code block.
So in other words: you still need to be "tech savvy" to do this...
Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible
#540oh my god, thank you, I thought it was me going insane, I can't make code snippets with syntax highlighting, when pressing the three graves (```) the entire line (and only the line I'm on) becomes a monospace block, it totally breaks how I use slack.