4 ms·

Slack might be billed as a professional tool, but it also has one of the worst interfaces I’ve ever used, riddled with non-intuitive workflows: - Endless chann

by belter 2y ago

Slack might be billed as a professional tool, but it also has one of the worst interfaces I’ve ever used, riddled with non-intuitive workflows: - Endless channel creation that buries crucial info... - Confusing side-panel threads that are easily missed, leading to fragmented discussions... - Notification overload that bombards you with pings... It's success it's a mystery, I can only attribute to fashion or the hype of chasing the latest trend.

agnivade 2y ago
Curious to know what other alternatives have you found better.
- snowe2010 2y ago
  Zulip is vastly better for people who are willing to learn an interface. But it’s not really very “pretty”
  - psyclobe 2y ago
    Hah, its 'good enough', but really has some bizarre ui flows that make things so very, very confusing...
    - tabbott 2y ago
      Hi! It'd be a huge help if you can stop by chat.zulip.org and share in #feedback what you find bizarre. Maybe we can fix them for you :)
- jdve 2y ago
  We use Twist at my company. I find the emphasis on asynchronous communication refreshing. It encourages more thoughtful discussion. Basecamp also lends helpfully in this direction, although adopting Basecamp means accepting an entire project management system as well.
  - agos 2y ago
    I found that the way Basecamp tries to achieve async communication is to make sync communication as painful as possible. Not a great experience.
throwup238 2y ago
> Slack might be billed as a professional tool, but it also has one of the worst interfaces I’ve ever used, riddled with non-intuitive workflows Have you used Microsoft Teams?
- jonathanlydall 2y ago
  I have, and I generally prefer it to Slack, unlike Slack, it (off the top of my head): - Has much richer message formatting and doesn't regularly do weird things to mess up the formatting as I'm composing a message. (Just this morning I was fighting Slack to try have nested bullet points not disappearing or de-indenting as I was composing a message). - Consistently marks messages as read without me having to click chats multiple times for the unread indicator to disappear. With Slack I somewhat regularly have this problem, more than once a week. - Like every other application on Windows, Ctrl+K works for adding a hyperlink. Slack is in fact so aware that people are used to using the Ctrl+K shortcut it even catches you trying to do it and then tells you how to add hyperlinks in their own special snowflake way. - Doesn't clutter my Windows notification centre. Unless I clicked the notification center message it doesn't ever disappear. WhatsApp by comparison which also uses the Windows notification center does this perfectly. Slack is the same on iOS, it doesn't clear messages from the notification center once a message is read unless you clicked the notification. Teams has its warts for sure, but I find it's considerably more polished than Slack in general.
  - andreif 2y ago
    Do you enjoy the other parts of MS ecosystem?
    - jonathanlydall 2y ago
      It's not perfect, but I'm very productive and happy using it. Windows 11 Pro on my Dell Latitude 5540 and it's a rock solid experience. I on principle always format my disk drive when getting a new PC and reinstall using an ISO downloaded from Microsoft to ensure no OEM software is on them. For my Dell the only thing I install is "Dell Command | Update" (not to be confused with Dell SupportAssist which is crap targeting general consumers). It's for updating drivers and firmware and it does absolutely no nonsense, only prompting me when a driver or firmware update is available. I use no third-party anti-malware, no "corporate management software", just Windows Defender, but with Dev Drive and exclusions to my working directories so everything is very fast for my development work with Visual Studio. My work is mostly developing for .NET and Electron which works on Linux and macOS as well. WSL with Visual Studio is super impressive that I can seamlessly debug processes running under WSL from normal Visual Studio. For Electron / NodeJS debugging I can use VS Code which also supports debugging processes running under WSL. I have done two registry tweaks to Windows 11 to remove a couple of annoyances: - I've turned off the "simplified" context menu which shows by default in Windows Explorer, otherwise most of what I need is hidden behind an extra click of my mouse. - I've turned off internet search results from showing on the Start Menu. This is a huge quality of life improvement, I've never ever cared for searching outside of my web browser and it makes the Start Menu super responsive and stops it showing web results above stuff on my local computer which was what I was looking for. (As a side remark, I was very happy when I only somewhat recently worked out how to get iOS to stop showing web search results when I search my home screen for apps, that was a huge annoyance as I only want to search for apps on my phone by name and often it would show web searches over a locally installed app name.) People constantly complain here about all the adverts on Windows 11. I honestly don't get any adverts, maybe it's because I'm in South Africa and not the US (marketing sounds like it's beyond obnoxious there). I think it came pre-installed (even when installing with the ISO downloaded from MS) with a few rubbish Windows Store apps (like Candy Crush), but I uninstalled them normally and nothing ever came back. I also use OneDrive already (which integrates really nicely with Windows), maybe if I didn't have it set up, Windows would be bugging me about it. Really, everything just works seamlessly for me.
oblio 2y ago
> Notification overload that bombards you with pings... 95% of people that say this don't mute channels (at all or enough).
matsemann 2y ago
The update last year where replies in threads ping you (make the icon red etc) same as if you got a mention/DM is just insane. Makes you accidentally ignore more crucial dms because non important threads get updated. I wish Slack had a "don't mute this channel completely, but only show it as unread once a day".

by belter 2y ago

agnivade 2y ago

Curious to know what other alternatives have you found better.

snowe2010 2y ago
Zulip is vastly better for people who are willing to learn an interface. But it’s not really very “pretty”
- psyclobe 2y ago
  Hah, its 'good enough', but really has some bizarre ui flows that make things so very, very confusing...
  - tabbott 2y ago
    Hi! It'd be a huge help if you can stop by chat.zulip.org and share in #feedback what you find bizarre. Maybe we can fix them for you :)
jdve 2y ago
We use Twist at my company. I find the emphasis on asynchronous communication refreshing. It encourages more thoughtful discussion. Basecamp also lends helpfully in this direction, although adopting Basecamp means accepting an entire project management system as well.
- agos 2y ago
  I found that the way Basecamp tries to achieve async communication is to make sync communication as painful as possible. Not a great experience.

throwup238 2y ago

> Slack might be billed as a professional tool, but it also has one of the worst interfaces I’ve ever used, riddled with non-intuitive workflows Have you used Microsoft Teams?

jonathanlydall 2y ago
I have, and I generally prefer it to Slack, unlike Slack, it (off the top of my head): - Has much richer message formatting and doesn't regularly do weird things to mess up the formatting as I'm composing a message. (Just this morning I was fighting Slack to try have nested bullet points not disappearing or de-indenting as I was composing a message). - Consistently marks messages as read without me having to click chats multiple times for the unread indicator to disappear. With Slack I somewhat regularly have this problem, more than once a week. - Like every other application on Windows, Ctrl+K works for adding a hyperlink. Slack is in fact so aware that people are used to using the Ctrl+K shortcut it even catches you trying to do it and then tells you how to add hyperlinks in their own special snowflake way. - Doesn't clutter my Windows notification centre. Unless I clicked the notification center message it doesn't ever disappear. WhatsApp by comparison which also uses the Windows notification center does this perfectly. Slack is the same on iOS, it doesn't clear messages from the notification center once a message is read unless you clicked the notification. Teams has its warts for sure, but I find it's considerably more polished than Slack in general.
- andreif 2y ago
  Do you enjoy the other parts of MS ecosystem?
  - jonathanlydall 2y ago
    It's not perfect, but I'm very productive and happy using it. Windows 11 Pro on my Dell Latitude 5540 and it's a rock solid experience. I on principle always format my disk drive when getting a new PC and reinstall using an ISO downloaded from Microsoft to ensure no OEM software is on them. For my Dell the only thing I install is "Dell Command | Update" (not to be confused with Dell SupportAssist which is crap targeting general consumers). It's for updating drivers and firmware and it does absolutely no nonsense, only prompting me when a driver or firmware update is available. I use no third-party anti-malware, no "corporate management software", just Windows Defender, but with Dev Drive and exclusions to my working directories so everything is very fast for my development work with Visual Studio. My work is mostly developing for .NET and Electron which works on Linux and macOS as well. WSL with Visual Studio is super impressive that I can seamlessly debug processes running under WSL from normal Visual Studio. For Electron / NodeJS debugging I can use VS Code which also supports debugging processes running under WSL. I have done two registry tweaks to Windows 11 to remove a couple of annoyances: - I've turned off the "simplified" context menu which shows by default in Windows Explorer, otherwise most of what I need is hidden behind an extra click of my mouse. - I've turned off internet search results from showing on the Start Menu. This is a huge quality of life improvement, I've never ever cared for searching outside of my web browser and it makes the Start Menu super responsive and stops it showing web results above stuff on my local computer which was what I was looking for. (As a side remark, I was very happy when I only somewhat recently worked out how to get iOS to stop showing web search results when I search my home screen for apps, that was a huge annoyance as I only want to search for apps on my phone by name and often it would show web searches over a locally installed app name.) People constantly complain here about all the adverts on Windows 11. I honestly don't get any adverts, maybe it's because I'm in South Africa and not the US (marketing sounds like it's beyond obnoxious there). I think it came pre-installed (even when installing with the ISO downloaded from MS) with a few rubbish Windows Store apps (like Candy Crush), but I uninstalled them normally and nothing ever came back. I also use OneDrive already (which integrates really nicely with Windows), maybe if I didn't have it set up, Windows would be bugging me about it. Really, everything just works seamlessly for me.

oblio 2y ago

> Notification overload that bombards you with pings... 95% of people that say this don't mute channels (at all or enough).

matsemann 2y ago

The update last year where replies in threads ping you (make the icon red etc) same as if you got a mention/DM is just insane. Makes you accidentally ignore more crucial dms because non important threads get updated. I wish Slack had a "don't mute this channel completely, but only show it as unread once a day".