Slack just introduced a WYSIWYG editor that you can't opt out of

25 points by waynenilsen ↗ HN
Please bother them on Twitter so they implement an opt out.

Their handle is @SlackHQ

14 comments

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Heard about this and didn't upgrade. Maybe you can find the old binary until they fix it.
It looks pretty nice. What's the issue exactly?

Reference: https://slackhq.com/new-slack-features-invites-message-forma...

Main issue is that I prefer WYSIWYW to WYSIWYG. There are many reasons why one may be preferable to another in various situations but I find that I prefer WYSIWYW for my workflows
Thanks for clarifying. I can see how that would be annoying.
My biggest gripe is that you can't just type the things you're used to typing and expect it to figure them out. Within fifteen minutes I tried to create a multiline blockquote (which you do by typing '>>>'). I was hoping for this:

    quote
    goes
    here
And instead I got a single line blockquote containing some of the markup for a multiline one:

   >>quote
goes

here

I can't figure out how to do the things I used to do without reaching for the mouse. And I really hate using the mouse.

Also, as a coder I do everything I can to reduce unnecessary cases of mutable state. The fact that my cursor now has a state that I have to keep track of really gets under my skin.

It's hidden until you click the 'A' icon. What's the major problem here? It doesn't take up any extra space and isn't visible unless you actively open the feature.
Only the toolbar gets hidden. WYSISYG editing is still enabled.
> It's hidden until you click the 'A' icon

It enabled itself by default for me. Clicking the 'Aa' does hide the extra UI elements, but doesn't disable the auto-formatting.

> It doesn't take up any extra space

It doubles the height of the input box when it's visible.

----

I don't mind the feature (in fact, it's nice to get immediate feedback on Slack's "almost Markdown but not quite" syntax), but I can see why others do mind.

And this new editor breaks a lot of my messages and my own formatting. Also escaping a code block gets really hard.