4 ms·

I'm a really, really big fan of Zulip - I forced it on my company and people are also not mutinying (though it's closer to mutinity than I'd like). I understan

by dijit 3y ago

I'm a really, really big fan of Zulip - I forced it on my company and people are also not mutinying (though it's closer to mutinity than I'd like). I understand the need to monetise and I'm a paying customer despite not really needing (or being able to use in some cases) the extended features of the standard plan. But for the love of god, please fix the mobile app. It's the #1 thing people are complaining to me about, and by a very wide margin. Adding more costs for self-hosting and using mobile is not a smart play when the mobile story right now is already terrible.

stevebmark 3y ago
I’ve seen engineers lead the charge to force Zulip on a company. I get it, it’s an engineering friendly tool. Otherwise it’s a fundamentally terrible application that is not appropriate for a whole company to use. I hope your mutiny happens!
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  Why is it terrible and not appropriate?
  - dijit 3y ago
    “because its not slack” was the consensus when I conducted an internal survey. Sadly people were not clearer than this. I suspect some UI prettiness things, some ease of use things (onboarding) and a fair few misgivings (such as voice chat and how images work) that makes it feel user-unfriendly. But I am speculating.
    - dbalatero 3y ago
      My stance would probably be: - I already learned Slack at my last 9 jobs - I don't feel like blowing up my workflow and learning something new - unless the value is overwhelmingly clear if someone tried to switch my company to Zulip or anything else. "what problem are you trying to solve?"
      - stavros 3y ago
        Having used Zulip, it's one of those things that sound dumb before you use them, but then you wonder how all these savages live without it. Basically, Zulip is the chat equivalent of a bidet.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - benhurmarcel 3y ago
        It’s a chat app. What is there to learn?
    - mavelikara 3y ago
      We used Zulip for over a year and then eventually switched to Slack. I still miss Zulip. The major reasons for us moving were: * it is not Slack! * lack of plugins from other applications * inability to collaborate with external parties - customers, vendors etc
      - dijit 3y ago
        I usually invite externals as guests to my Zulip instance. Unlimited guests is nice
  - kibwen 3y ago
    Most companies don't actually do anything useful, and their internal chat is just for socialization. Slack is terrible for having actual productive conversation and great at unstructured socialization, whereas Zulip is the reverse.
  - ivirshup 3y ago
    I assume because it can be a little hard to navigate and doesn't have as polished a UI. But also you can actually pick up a conversation from a month ago, so is infinitely better.
tabbott 3y ago
Hi, I lead the Zulip project. I agree the existing React Native mobile apps have been the biggest pain point for Zulip. Our mobile team's main focus for the last year been rewriting our mobile apps in Flutter, which will result in apps that are faster, dramatically more correct in terms of how faithfully they implement Zulip's API and business logic, and with a cleaner design. Here's the section of the Zulip 8.0 blog post about it: https://blog.zulip.com/2023/12/15/zulip-8-0-released/#apps https://blog.zulip.com/2023/12/15/zulip-8-0-released/#apps Curious readers may enjoy the main chat.zulip.org conversation it links to, about our evaluation of Flutter. But in short, our experience has been that it has proven to be a much much better platform than React Native for a small but very capable team that wants to build a high quality mobile app. I should mention that the upstream Flutter project is awesome: it's been an absolute pleasure that when we find significant problems with the platform for our use case, like the Android scroll physics not feeling native, we have been able to contribute a series of pull requests to fix the issue for everyone. As a result, we've contributed a few dozen PRs to upstream Flutter already.
- wmf 3y ago
  Flutter from Google doesn't act native on Android?
  - leosanchez 3y ago
    Flutter uses its own graphics (skia?) for all the platforms IIRC.

by dijit 3y ago

stevebmark 3y ago

I’ve seen engineers lead the charge to force Zulip on a company. I get it, it’s an engineering friendly tool. Otherwise it’s a fundamentally terrible application that is not appropriate for a whole company to use. I hope your mutiny happens!

mixmastamyk 3y ago
Why is it terrible and not appropriate?
- dijit 3y ago
  “because its not slack” was the consensus when I conducted an internal survey. Sadly people were not clearer than this. I suspect some UI prettiness things, some ease of use things (onboarding) and a fair few misgivings (such as voice chat and how images work) that makes it feel user-unfriendly. But I am speculating.
  - dbalatero 3y ago
    My stance would probably be: - I already learned Slack at my last 9 jobs - I don't feel like blowing up my workflow and learning something new - unless the value is overwhelmingly clear if someone tried to switch my company to Zulip or anything else. "what problem are you trying to solve?"
    - stavros 3y ago
      Having used Zulip, it's one of those things that sound dumb before you use them, but then you wonder how all these savages live without it. Basically, Zulip is the chat equivalent of a bidet.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - benhurmarcel 3y ago
      It’s a chat app. What is there to learn?
  - mavelikara 3y ago
    We used Zulip for over a year and then eventually switched to Slack. I still miss Zulip. The major reasons for us moving were: * it is not Slack! * lack of plugins from other applications * inability to collaborate with external parties - customers, vendors etc
    - dijit 3y ago
      I usually invite externals as guests to my Zulip instance. Unlimited guests is nice
- kibwen 3y ago
  Most companies don't actually do anything useful, and their internal chat is just for socialization. Slack is terrible for having actual productive conversation and great at unstructured socialization, whereas Zulip is the reverse.
- ivirshup 3y ago
  I assume because it can be a little hard to navigate and doesn't have as polished a UI. But also you can actually pick up a conversation from a month ago, so is infinitely better.

tabbott 3y ago

Hi, I lead the Zulip project. I agree the existing React Native mobile apps have been the biggest pain point for Zulip. Our mobile team's main focus for the last year been rewriting our mobile apps in Flutter, which will result in apps that are faster, dramatically more correct in terms of how faithfully they implement Zulip's API and business logic, and with a cleaner design. Here's the section of the Zulip 8.0 blog post about it: https://blog.zulip.com/2023/12/15/zulip-8-0-released/#apps https://blog.zulip.com/2023/12/15/zulip-8-0-released/#apps Curious readers may enjoy the main chat.zulip.org conversation it links to, about our evaluation of Flutter. But in short, our experience has been that it has proven to be a much much better platform than React Native for a small but very capable team that wants to build a high quality mobile app. I should mention that the upstream Flutter project is awesome: it's been an absolute pleasure that when we find significant problems with the platform for our use case, like the Android scroll physics not feeling native, we have been able to contribute a series of pull requests to fix the issue for everyone. As a result, we've contributed a few dozen PRs to upstream Flutter already.

wmf 3y ago
Flutter from Google doesn't act native on Android?
- leosanchez 3y ago
  Flutter uses its own graphics (skia?) for all the platforms IIRC.