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I'm sorry, but Slack is garbage, and those complaints are silly. Having to search the entire conversation history in the chat window is a terrible idea because

I'm sorry, but Slack is garbage, and those complaints are silly. Having to search the entire conversation history in the chat window is a terrible idea because it's slow and difficult to use. Having a separate tool or page to search history is a superior solution, and software exists to do that in IRC. Rich text is over rated, and 99% of messages don't use it anyway. Believe it or not nobody wants to see your silly gif, and they'd be just fine with :-) instead of an emoji. Integrating with IRC is also trivial because its a standardized open protocol and there are a ton of tools available. It doesn't need a bunch of pre-fab "integrations" because it's not using a dumb proprietary API. But having an IT guy spend half a day properly setting up an IRC server is hard and it doesn't have a crappy web UI by default, so lets all use Slack.

toofy 8y ago
While I personally prefer irc and definitely agree that an open protocol along the lines of irc should be the direction we head towards, I think it may be a bit shortsighted to imply users don’t prefer things such as in app searching and it definitely seems they love gifs. I’m pretty sure asking users to leave their app and go to a separate webpage to search wouldn’t sit well with most users, particularly people who are involved in some kind of deadline for their project—what we might brush off as “it’s just like two extra clicks!” is actually much more disrupting. It pulls you out of your workflow and those extra clicks feel like they add up over time. While some of us may sneer at chat apps like Slack, it’s obvious their UX/UI heavily resonates with users. We should be looking at why users absolutely prefer Slack and see if we can build a client based on an open protocol which will give the user experience most users prefer while still maintaining an irc type experience for users like us.
kccqzy 8y ago
> Having to search the entire conversation history in the chat window is a terrible idea because it's slow and difficult to use. Having a separate tool or page to search history is a superior solution, and software exists to do that in IRC. I have to disagree with this. Having to search for historical messages right where you can see recent messages is convenient. Using a different tool (potentially with a different UI) increases the context switch overhead. And there's no reason the search must be slow; the current chat window can display a portion of the messages, and the search can be done either on the server, or a background thread searching a database locally. Slack in particular has some bad engineering to make its UI slow and memory-hungry, but many of its copycats are actually functionally similar yet much faster.
chrisseaton 8y ago
> Rich text is over rated, and 99% of messages don't use it anyway. Believe it or not nobody wants to see your silly gif, and they'd be just fine with :-) instead of an emoji. Many people here want to write about code in their chats so at the very least want to have an option for monospacing parts of a message. You’re being flippant pretending it’s about GIFs rather than a genuine use case. > using a dumb proprietary API Why do you need to insult other people’s work like that?
- jlarocco 8y ago
  > Many people here want to write about code in their chats so at the very least want to have an option for monospacing parts of a message. Fair enough, but I would still argue that if somebody's posting enough code for that to matter, a link to a pastebin or a Github Gist, with syntax highlighting, is a better solution. > Why do you need to insult other people’s work like that? Because it's a poor choice to create a proprietary chat protocol because it allows Slack to control what people can say and how they say it.
  - loeg 8y ago
    Creating the proprietary, unstable API protocol was a great choice for Slack given they want to lock-in customers to their paid service. It's just a poor choice for everyone else.
    - na85 8y ago
      So a business made a user hostile move that happens to also be a good business decision. Why is that laudable? Why is this something worthy of praise? Why do we like this product or company? Why is criticism of this product being downmodded?
      - loeg 8y ago
        None of this is responsive to my comment; I didn't make any of those claims, nor do I control the collective voting of HN users.
loeg 8y ago
> they'd be just fine with :-) instead of an emoji. And IRC supports UTF-8 and unicode emojis just fine. > But having an IT guy spend half a day properly setting up an IRC server is hard and it doesn't have a crappy web UI by default, so lets all use Slack. I've found my organization uses Slack less because of the buzzy features and more to route around the brain damage of IT. E.g., IT won't allow standing up communication servers with access allowed from outside the Corp intranet. Especially IRC. Sales and support engineers frequently need chat access from outside the corp network. Ergo, 3rd party chat solution. Slack is the worst solution in many ways, but it turns out fixing idiotic 90s security policies in IT departments is hard and you have to completely block the public internet to block Slack.

toofy 8y ago

While I personally prefer irc and definitely agree that an open protocol along the lines of irc should be the direction we head towards, I think it may be a bit shortsighted to imply users don’t prefer things such as in app searching and it definitely seems they love gifs. I’m pretty sure asking users to leave their app and go to a separate webpage to search wouldn’t sit well with most users, particularly people who are involved in some kind of deadline for their project—what we might brush off as “it’s just like two extra clicks!” is actually much more disrupting. It pulls you out of your workflow and those extra clicks feel like they add up over time. While some of us may sneer at chat apps like Slack, it’s obvious their UX/UI heavily resonates with users. We should be looking at why users absolutely prefer Slack and see if we can build a client based on an open protocol which will give the user experience most users prefer while still maintaining an irc type experience for users like us.

kccqzy 8y ago

> Having to search the entire conversation history in the chat window is a terrible idea because it's slow and difficult to use. Having a separate tool or page to search history is a superior solution, and software exists to do that in IRC. I have to disagree with this. Having to search for historical messages right where you can see recent messages is convenient. Using a different tool (potentially with a different UI) increases the context switch overhead. And there's no reason the search must be slow; the current chat window can display a portion of the messages, and the search can be done either on the server, or a background thread searching a database locally. Slack in particular has some bad engineering to make its UI slow and memory-hungry, but many of its copycats are actually functionally similar yet much faster.

chrisseaton 8y ago

> Rich text is over rated, and 99% of messages don't use it anyway. Believe it or not nobody wants to see your silly gif, and they'd be just fine with :-) instead of an emoji. Many people here want to write about code in their chats so at the very least want to have an option for monospacing parts of a message. You’re being flippant pretending it’s about GIFs rather than a genuine use case. > using a dumb proprietary API Why do you need to insult other people’s work like that?

jlarocco 8y ago
> Many people here want to write about code in their chats so at the very least want to have an option for monospacing parts of a message. Fair enough, but I would still argue that if somebody's posting enough code for that to matter, a link to a pastebin or a Github Gist, with syntax highlighting, is a better solution. > Why do you need to insult other people’s work like that? Because it's a poor choice to create a proprietary chat protocol because it allows Slack to control what people can say and how they say it.
- loeg 8y ago
  Creating the proprietary, unstable API protocol was a great choice for Slack given they want to lock-in customers to their paid service. It's just a poor choice for everyone else.
  - na85 8y ago
    So a business made a user hostile move that happens to also be a good business decision. Why is that laudable? Why is this something worthy of praise? Why do we like this product or company? Why is criticism of this product being downmodded?
    - loeg 8y ago
      None of this is responsive to my comment; I didn't make any of those claims, nor do I control the collective voting of HN users.

loeg 8y ago

> they'd be just fine with :-) instead of an emoji. And IRC supports UTF-8 and unicode emojis just fine. > But having an IT guy spend half a day properly setting up an IRC server is hard and it doesn't have a crappy web UI by default, so lets all use Slack. I've found my organization uses Slack less because of the buzzy features and more to route around the brain damage of IT. E.g., IT won't allow standing up communication servers with access allowed from outside the Corp intranet. Especially IRC. Sales and support engineers frequently need chat access from outside the corp network. Ergo, 3rd party chat solution. Slack is the worst solution in many ways, but it turns out fixing idiotic 90s security policies in IT departments is hard and you have to completely block the public internet to block Slack.