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Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

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Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#581

Post by huffmsa »

izietto wrote: post #486
Plyphon_ wrote: post #464

In 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…

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

It's not just that the eng/dev/power users (me) prefer the old behavior, it's that we're the only ones I see who use it.

I get little pangs of dread a split second before I realize I'm about to have to spend 10-30 seconds figuring out new formatting since it shipped.

And as a response, I'm less reluctant to use it, meaning my messages are less detailed, meaning longer conversation, less precision.

It's a "convenience" for non-power users, on a feature only used by powerusers

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#582

Post by buboard »

bmarkovic wrote: post #414
Arathorn wrote: post #35

Amusingly, for https://riot.im we just shelved our WYSIWYG editor efforts after trying two completely separate implementations over the years (one via Draft.js, the other via Slate.js) because: a) it's a nightmare to get right, b) nobody used it anyway (it was optional), c) chat isn't a wordprocessor, d) markdown (commonmark) + floating formatting toolbar is good enough. Our current editor was written from scratch (c…

The fact that this industry turned to a proprietary low-quality solution like Slack when Riot/Matrix have already existed tells the full story about what a bunch of incompetent idiots we all are. Everyone frustrated with the new Slack input box deserves what they got. Me included.

There is a chicken-and-egg problem with matrix. It's clearly nice, but the more people use it, the easier it will become to install/maintain. That's how wordpress wins over commercial blogging platforms.

One thing i found it hard to do is integrate matrix with an existing database of users. It would be perfect for our community chat.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#583

Post by fbnlsr »

jussij wrote: post #557
Ensorceled wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point, I guess they could stop using slack and eventually get fired.

Funnily enough I was hired on a 12 month contract as a software developer. Four months into that contract I was moved over to a struggling 'Slack' enabled project, to help them work through their ever growing backlog. I knew someone working on that project and discussed with them the project's use of Slack only to realise it was nothing more than a talk fest and not for me. So when the project manager approached me,…

99% of the time, Slack is nothing more but a glorified, shitty messaging client. And most people I know don't even know why they're using slack, it's just that it's the tool they think everybody uses, and they don't really see why they should look elsewhere.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#585

Post by ailideex »

bartread wrote: post #339
tbabb wrote: post #111

This reminds me of Atlassian's god-awful WYSIWYG editor. In both cases, I get that some users can't or don't like to use a machine grammar/markup, however simple. For some people markup is bad UX. Give them a WYSIWYG; that's fine. But don't remove the markup editor if your WYSIWYG editor is anything but a perfect one-two-one replacement for markup (and I have never seen one that satisfies that). IIRC there was a time…

> This reminds me of Atlassian's god-awful WYSIWYG editor. Oh my goodness: triggered. I've barred the use of Confluence at our company specifically because of this. "But, but, we used it at blah company." "Yes, so did I at blahblah company, and it was unbelievably crappy and made me angry every time I had to edit a document: we're not using it." I DO NOT want to have to use what amounts to an extremely buggy, caprici…

Having to edit something in confluence always ruins my day

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#586

Post by fbnlsr »

syshum wrote: post #575
sharken wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not until Microsoft Teams gets the layout fixed, see https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/su...

Not really. Teams biggest "Feature" is that is part of the Office 364 Suite, a lot of the layout and other issues are simply forgiven since there are no additional licensing or costs to use it over Slack if you are already on Office 364 Enterprise Teams is "good enough" for most organizations and is improving, That is microsoft current plan, be "good enough"

What happened to the last day of Office 365?

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#587

Post by coremoff »

Exuma wrote: post #389
fragmede wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Survivorship bias. What happened to Digg? Myspace? UI isn't the only reason, but it's definitely a contributing factor in their demise. The eBay story about changing the color of the banner should be followed for new features as well.

what happened with ebay color

https://theuxblog.com/blog/redesigning-user-experience

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#588

Post by tiborsaas »

sambe wrote: post #495

This is not one of those "oh, that's annoying, i'll have to remember that and learn to work around it" issues. It's more like "I want to immediately stop using this software but have no choice". Its driving me crazy - Slack is all text input. Don't break text input dummy!

We are different. For me it's exactly the "oh you changed it, never mind, I'll use it a bit differently from now on" situation.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#589

Post by clarry »

StavrosK wrote: post #39

At the risk of sounding like a shill, I'd like to shill Zulip. We started using it instead of Slack, and it has been amazing . It's fast, everything is designed to help you get to conversations quickly, keyboard accessibility is second to none and the streams is a much better default than rooms. I can't recommend it enough, it's well worth the money even though they have a nice free tier and are OSS so you can self-h…

I also use Zulip at work. It's better than the other fancy chat applications I've tried, but still can't hold a candle to IRC.

Re: Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible

#590

Post by filleduchaos »

IshKebab wrote: post #443
ako wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack probably has statistics which indicate that by now their largest user group is non-techies. And i'm assuming that if you look at paying customers, the amount of non-technies is probably even larger. People who are probably not even aware of this thing called markdown. So if you need to increase revenue replacing markdown with wysiwyg will make sense to UX and product management.

Exactly - Slack has matched the formatting in WhatsApp, which pretty much everyone outside America uses. Far fewer people have even heard of Markdown. It's still really annoying though.

Actually Slack _hasn't_ matched the formatting in WhatsApp, they've gone and done the exact opposite of it. WhatsApp's input box isn't WYSIWYG.
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