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Disable new Slack WYSIWYG editor with this bookmarklet
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- benbristow 7y agoI personally don't mind the new WYSIWYG. Doesn't get in the way much at all really. The only thing it's weird with I find is the code blocks, (previously 3 backticks, linebreak, code, linebreak, 3 backticks). Not a massive fan of how after 3 backticks it now puts an inline code format 'block', seems a bit weird.
- aembleton 7y agoSeems weird, but I'll get used to it
- faceplanted 7y agoThe three backticks is what got me, I tend to paste blocks in and then put backticks around them, which is just broken now as it just inlines the first line and does nothing to the last line, I'll just disable it for now and set a reminder for sometime soon to see if they've fixed it
- holstvoogd 7y agooooh so that's it! I could figure out the issue everyone was having with this.
- johnmaguire2013 7y agoSimilar problem with quotes.
- perlgeek 7y agoWouldn't this make more sense as a tampermonkey / greasemonkey userscript? That way it loads automatically when you visit slack, no need to repeat anything. Disadvantage would be that you need a browser extension.
- ed_blackburn 7y agoI'm not going to do this on every refresh. I predict the market/ecossytem for guerrilla browser extensions targeting technical Slack users hotting up.
- semiotagonal 7y agoHow hard would it be to run Slack in a special VM that brokered UI events from another application? I.e. the latest Slack would be running in a VM that made everything seem normal to it, but in reality the UI input and output would be supplied by another application which was presenting a "Slack Classic" interface to the actual user.
- londons_explore 7y agoAt that point, you might as well just use the slack API...
- lukax 7y agoYou can just toggle the old minimal input by clicking the first/third button from the right (Aa - Hide formatting).
- heharkon 7y agoIsn't it the old functionality with the "Aa" toggle button? At least I don't have any problems with that after pressing it.
- gknoy 7y agoFenced blocks and `monospaced` stuff still behave frustratingly whether I have the "Aa" button toggled or not. I hate it -- wish they'd just add support for plain markdown as an option :(
- heharkon 7y agoAh, true. I rarely use any markdown so I didn't notice any difference :)
- huffmsa 7y agoAnd that's the heart of the issue. This is a "convenience" introduced to make markdown easier for people who didn't really use markdown, at the cost of adding a pain point for people who are heavy users of the markdown features.
- sodosopa 7y agoDoes html work? Why not use it instead?
- notkaiho 7y agoNo, HTML is not part of how you can format text in Slack.
- pavel_lishin 7y agoHTML would also be a pretty verbose way to format text I'm typing out to coworkers, etc.
- 7y ago
- kodablah 7y agoDoing some security debugging on Slack desktop a year or so ago, I saw that you could easily open up a Chrome debugger port via CLI option to use with puppeteer/chromedp/etc. I haven't checked lately, but in theory it should be easy enough to connect to the debug port and run this short script to get the same benefit in the Electron app.
- tolqen 7y agoYou should be able to press Cmd+Shift+I and open the developer console.
- pavel_lishin 7y agoDoesn't work for me, just opens the channel info window.
- nanny 7y agorun slack with SLACK_DEVELOPER_MENU=1 and then right click and hit "inspect element"
- mangatmodi 7y agoThank you. It was kind of Broken. I copy pasted a text with code tags and it didn't recognized. Quite painful overall.
- self_awareness 7y agoThere are browser plugins like Greasemonkey or Tampermonkey that manage these kind of patches. I'm often removing some "functionality" of a website I visit often (e.g. removing annoying chat boxes) There are also repositories of scripts like GreasyFork (https://greasyfork.org https://greasyfork.org). I suggest that maybe your script could be ported to Tampermonkey instead of distributing it as a bookmarklet.
- d4rky 7y agoYou can do it in the desktop app as well. If you run it with SLACK_DEVELOPER_MENU=true in env vars, it'll enable you to right click to Inspect Element, open devtools and run this code snippet there
- underwater 7y agoI wonder if the people who complain about Electron apps will refrain from doing this out of principle.
- d4rky 7y agowell, they can use the browser version and have this snippet working without any extra steps
- hattar 7y agoI don't understand the point of electron for applications whose functionality is entirely dependent on being online anyway. At that point, just use a browser as it's one fewer item to install. Is the Electron version of Slack capable of anything beyond the browser version?
- jrockway 7y agoYou can include native code in Electron apps. I am not sure it is actually needed in any of the messaging Electron apps (Slack, Discord), but the capability is there. My favorite Electron app is Balena Etcher. It is "dd" but uses 200MB of RAM. It is AMAZING.
- sly010 7y ago> It is "dd" but uses 200MB of RAM. Say no more. I am sold.
- _-___________-_ 7y agoDoes it actually include any native code, or does it just wrap `dd`? I tried this app and it was beyond awful. I went back to `dd`.
- metalliqaz 7y agoI don't use slack so the issue isn't on my radar, but if this has made it to the top of HN.... I guess Slack reeeealy effed up.
- jrockway 7y agoI think it's the product of popularity and the impact of the bug. Slack is exceedingly popular, so any change is going to come under a lot of scrutiny. It is not clear to me how many new features Slack needs. Clearly people were able to successfully use the old text-entry UI; there was no shortage of Slack messages. I feel like it would be better for them to focus on things that will add value to their platform without affecting people that are already using the core product. Meeting scheduling, corporate directory, video conferencing... nobody is in a better position to do that than them. And you can add those things, charge extra money for them, and not upset your existing customers. Sometimes software is "done". The core of Slack is done.
- brojonat 7y agoNothing gold can stay
- cycrutchfield 7y agoIt’s a tempest in a teapot. Yes, the new editor is horrible. But at best it is a minor annoyance, and most users learn to work around it.
- stefan_ 7y agoChances are the people concerned enough by this change to write a strongly worded letter could immediately improve their performance by closing Slack for at least half their work day.
- therealdrag0 7y agoYa, reminds me of "bike shedding". People give disproportionate attention to trivial issues that it's easy to have an opinion about.
- machiste77 7y agoThis is the content I come here for. True hacker news.
- johnmaguire2013 7y agoI've been struggling with the new editor for the past week or so. I finally sent this feedback to Slack today: Hi there, when the WYSIWYG editor rolled out, I was pleased to see it could be disabled with the "Aa" button in the bottom right. I quickly realized it's not disabled, the toolbar is just hidden. Here are the problems I run into: 1. Typing ``` and then pasting and typing it again (force of habit from *every other service that uses Markdown* including Slack up until this point), leaving me with an extra ``` inside my code block. 2. Typing >, pasting, and hitting enter too quickly that it doesn't seem to register. Or it registers for one line, but not the rest. Then I have to fix the rest. I'd prefer the old method of simply typing > in front of each line, consistently. But even when I try this, sometimes > doesn't get converted to quotes. 3. Typing :emoji_name: often times results in me typing the name too quickly, and, similar to the bad auto-selection of @-names, it chooses an emoji whose name I didn't type (even though I typed an emoji name exactly). Please just don't touch it until the full thing is parsed on send. 4. *foo*, _foo_, etc. -- again, I type very quickly (~158wpm when going my fastest) and these aren't getting converted. I'd expect if they don't get converted when I type it, they'd at least get converted on send. They don't. Please give me a way to opt out of this or drastically improve it. Thank you. I was disheartened to hear that Slack is adamant they will not allow this to be disabled: 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 feedback on board, disabling the new formatting tool isn't an option that we will be offering. We are committed to doing what we can to improve the new experience for you, and will continue to make improvements to the new editor. Thank you for sharing these specific examples as we're carefully reviewing all feedback and passing it over to our product team.
- strictnein 7y agoReally frustrating seeing them repeat the "disrupting your workflow" bit. It's not a "workflow" app, it's a chat app.
- tradesmanhelix 7y agoMaybe if they start getting enough emails/tweets they will reconsider this...emailing them now...
- ipoopatwork 7y agoDon't forget to complain using /feedback !
- jaywalk 7y agoI'd imagine that once this "experiment" is rolled out to 100% of the user base and no longer an "experiment" they will remove the feature flag and the code for the old input box.
- anaphor 7y agoThis isn't working for me on Firefox 68 (I have a newer version on my other laptop I'll try out later). I get CSP errors: `Content Security Policy: The page’s settings blocked the loading of a resource at inline (“script-src”).` I doubt it's something that can be fixed without writing a plugin / user script. Kudos for figuring out how to disable it though!
- jborichevskiy 7y agoThe fact that surrounding a word with tildes ~like so~ works in the initial message editor but not when editing a sent message is completely illogical.
- imhoguy 7y agoGet ready for cease&desist from Slack: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17869249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17869249
- stefan_ 7y agoI guess the fact that this is some absurd string-based-programming code is bonus entertainment. '[19] Bulk add experiment assignments to redux'!
- Justsignedup 7y agoI for one love it. That is all.
- parliament32 7y agoGood news, they're backpedaling. Just got this in a support request: >We really appreciate your feedback, and we hear your frustration. We're sorry for the impact this is having on your ability to communicate with your team and on your overall productivity. We made a mistake by forcing everyone into this feature without providing an opt-out for customers like you: people for whom the existing behavior was working just fine. >We've started working on a preference that will let you return to the previous message composer. We don't have a specific release date to share right now — it's this team's top and only priority, however, and we expect to have it available on the desktop within a couple of weeks, with Android following shortly thereafter. >We will follow up with another note when this option is available to you, and we'll include instructions on how to enable it. >Again, we're sorry for the disruption and we're grateful for the feedback. We missed the mark on this feature! We will do our best to learn from this and avoid similar mistakes in the future.
- lordfoom 7y ago> we expect to have it available on the desktop within a couple of weeks, A couple of WEEKS???
- tempestn 7y agoI can't tell if you think that's fast or slow. They're not just rolling back the feature; they have to add a new user preference, and replace the A/B test with the ability to run either way. Add in testing and such, and given Slack's scale, getting that released in a couple weeks sounds about right.
- p0cc 7y agoI made a firefox/chrome extension based on this script. * Firefox Addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-slack-wysiwyg/ * Chrome Extn: Pending Review * Source: https://github.com/pocc/no-wysiwyg edit: formatting
- aashcan 7y agoJust got another note from them: We really appreciate your feedback, and we hear your frustration. We're sorry for the impact this is having on your ability to communicate with your team and on your overall productivity. We made a mistake by forcing everyone into this feature without providing an opt-out for customers like you: people for whom the existing behavior was working just fine. We've started working on a preference that will let you return to the previous message composer. We don't have a specific release date to share right now — it's this team's top and only priority, however, and we expect to have it available on the desktop within a couple of weeks, with Android following shortly thereafter. We will follow up with another note when this option is available to you, and we'll include instructions on how to enable it. Again, we're sorry for the disruption and we're grateful for the feedback. We missed the mark on this feature! We will do our best to learn from this and avoid similar mistakes in the future.