[HN Gopher] Slack's jarring new design - can you go back to the ...
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Slack's jarring new design - can you go back to the old one?
Author : gslin
Score : 71 points
Date : 2023-09-13 04:47 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.techfinitive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.techfinitive.com)
| tycoon177 wrote:
| All things considered, I like the new design. There are some nice
| features, like the activity tab being a more sane way to view
| unreads than previously available. I'm also a sucker for the new
| custom theming support. It's also nice to see slack
| workflows/automations being more discoverable. I was starting to
| get concerned that this feature would be canned.
|
| Not knowing which workspace has notifications at a quick glance
| is a huge pain though.
| hooverd wrote:
| The lack of easy multi-workspace switching is annoying.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| Why does that search bar look eerily similar to VSCode's
| redesigned one? They even have the arrows in the right place and
| everything.
| hooverd wrote:
| Developers take cues from what they use.
| threesevenths wrote:
| My first thought seeing it yesterday was, wow this looks like an
| email client. Wide list of chats, message previews, folders and
| workspaces, all tucked into an interface reminiscent of Outlook.
| The organizers have won. What's next?
| Twirrim wrote:
| A new twist on Zawinski's law? ("every program attempts to
| expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so
| expand are replaced by ones which can.")
|
| "Every program attempts to expand until it looks like a mail
| client. Those programs which cannot so expand, are replaced by
| ones which can"
| jghn wrote:
| The only real issue I have is unfortunately a dealbreaker for me.
|
| Right now I can see at a glance all of my workspaces and if any
| have a notification. I use a lot of workspaces and use this to
| see if any need attention.
|
| With the new UI the only way to see this is to hover over the
| workspace icon. What used to be an unconscious visual scan now
| must be a conscious action.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Seems very similar to the discord update in the last several
| months that does a similar thing with servers
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Luckily all my Slack workspaces except for one have left for
| Discord so I won't have this problem!
| mchusma wrote:
| Yes, multiple workspaces is not effectively entirely broken for
| the reasons you mentioned.
|
| I was on about 10 workspaces before, many were just fun groups
| I was a part of. But the UI was so bad for multiple workspaces
| that I had to leave almost all of the fun groups.
|
| I still have 2-3 slack channels that I must be on though, and
| knowing what notifications are in which group is impossible at
| a glance. I am thinking about running 1 on desktop and any
| others in separate browser windows as a hack, but I'm not sure
| if this is better or worse.
|
| I'm hoping they have some way of allowing you to see multiple
| workspaces again!
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I'm not one to say any system is ever perfect. But what are they
| trying to fix? The slack UI is overall pretty decent, and this
| looks like an iterative step back, judging from the comments
| about multiple workspaces.
| jghn wrote:
| I saw some discussion on r/slack that the majority of users
| only have 1-2 workspaces. For a user like that I could see this
| UI as a cleanup. And I can understand why they make the multi-
| workspace use cases harder, as much as I hate it.
| stonogo wrote:
| This change seems like a surefire way to ensure the majority
| of users only have 1-2 workspaces, forever. Why they
| prioritized making it hard to make heavier use of their
| product is beyond me.
| willio58 wrote:
| After an hour or so I got pretty used to it. The "Home" view is
| almost identical to how the whole app used to be. The other views
| just give different ways to view DMs, messages marked for later,
| etc.
| parkersweb wrote:
| Overall I think the new design is fine - the biggest gripe is the
| colour themes which seem to mostly hark back to Windows Vista / 7
| aero vibes at the expense of contrast and ease of reading.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| That was my first thought from the screenshots. I don't have
| the best near vision and the new colors look much more
| difficult to read. I use Slack at work and am not looking
| forward to this update.
| saltcured wrote:
| Will this affect the web UI?
|
| I have been a holdout on the desktop app and just have two
| different workspaces opened in two different tabs in a dedicated
| Firefox profile. As far as I can remember, some minor UI changes
| may have appeared in one workspace days or weeks ahead of the
| other.
|
| Frankly, I wasn't barely aware that there was a multi-workspace
| Slack UI... I've seen the add/switch workspace menu but never
| used it.
| alwaysbeconsing wrote:
| Yes, the desktop app and in-browser are the same if the
| workspace has been moved to the new design.
| saltcured wrote:
| Hopefully they won't break my current flow via changes to the
| auth/state model.
|
| Currently, it doesn't seem to mind that each browser tab is a
| different login to a different workspace, so I can just
| ignore the multi-workspace features. This works even though
| they have the same apparent web origin, just different
| "client" IDs in the URL.
| freedomben wrote:
| Another cycle? I've seen it so many times. Designers and front
| end devs need to do _something_ so they refresh the UI every few
| years to justify their existence. Thanks to SaaS we now have no
| choice if /when we upgrade.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Thanks to SaaS we now have no choice if/when we upgrade.
|
| This is one of the main reasons why I avoid using any SaaS
| services whenever possible.
| rpwilcox wrote:
| Ummm how do you know what Slack workspace you're in?
|
| Use case: I'm in #general. Can I ask a clarifying question about
| $DAYJOB's (currently private) Q4 plans... or did I accidentally
| leak that private information because no I'm _actually_ in the
| #general for _Javascript Geniuses Slacking Together_ community?
| dbbk wrote:
| The workspace name is literally in the top left corner for me?
| jghn wrote:
| You can still see the current workspace icon in the upper left.
| You just can't see the icons of any *other* workspaces. Which I
| find maddening for other reasons.
| tuzemec wrote:
| At least you can still switch between workspaces with
| cmd+1/2/3/4... But this is absurd design decision. Make it at
| least configurable...
| rpwilcox wrote:
| oh and use File -> Workspace -> the workspace you want.
|
| Vs having the list of workspaces on the left with the current
| one highlighted-with-a-border
| whoopsie wrote:
| What's read and unread? The unread counts don't seem to update
| for me without quite some delay or a tab change. Confusing.
| zaps wrote:
| TIL PC Pro Magazine is too cheap to get a pro Slack subscription
| makeitdouble wrote:
| They're less than 30 people, the pro version probably brings
| them nothing.
|
| Been in that situation a few times, and we went above the
| message display limit only after adding bots relaying our
| production warnings.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| Why pay if the free version does the job?
| xinayder wrote:
| We had the era of Slack-like interface, now it's time for Teams-
| like interface.
|
| Outlook recently changed it and I absolutely hated it. Took me a
| good 2 weeks to get used to it. I was used to clicking on the
| bottom to open my calendar, now everything moved and I look
| everywhere BUT the left sidebar which was recently added. And, to
| make things worse, the icon is not your traditional calendar icon
| and you don't get a tooltip saying it'll open your Calendar when
| you hover over it.
|
| I disliked Teams' interface for this and now I hate it even more
| because this seems to be the new shitty trend UX is going to.
| smko wrote:
| Lots and lots of scrolling up and down now. The glance view is
| not there anymore.
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