I’ve started working at a company that uses Zulip and it’s by far the best thought out UX I’ve ever worked with in a communications app. Sure there’s some polish needed but the general structure just lets me get to where I want, gives me an overview of everything going on, and generally makes me happy. I wish for more keyboard shortcuts maybe, and the mobile app needs the recent conversations view, but I’m sure they’ll get there.
Replying to myself because I'm sure someone from Zulip will read this thread: I also wish for a tiered channel system. Instead of muting some, I'd like to promote some to high priority, so my inbox can toggle between the ones I really care about and a general overview.
I wish Zulip (and other apps) provided an inbox instead of just ephemeral notifications that disappear once a message is viewed. Lack of inbox means that I have to use unread messages as a way to manage my inbox -- because the moment I click on a notification / take a quick peek at a message there's no easy way to mark it for coming back to later.
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+100 for Zulip though; by far the sanest messaging experience for this kind of context.
I just had a look. I can absolutely understand parent. I’d want an option to include read messages in the inbox, not avoid marking as read. I want a history of stuff in my inbox, the same way discord, my RSS reader, and my email client work. All those have a read and unread state, but I can still see the read ones.
Zulip being fully open-source and self-hostable helps this. It's what the Bluesky team have been calling "credible exit", and Zulip has it way more than Bluesky does.
On the other hand, I would love to see more tech companies being co-operatives, where their members get a say in governance. That'd be the ultimate hard-mode for a business that was dedicated to being rugpull-resistant.
As nice as zulips aspirations may be, every time i have to use it for a community i effectively stop interacting with them after a short while just because everything is janky, ugly and feels like a drag to interact with, just tried opening it on my phone to see if it improved but the header ui is just plain broken.
I have looked at the rust Zulip forums, which are bulky. But with moderation and rules and having people on the autistic spectrum [citation needed], it perhaps is usable for large organizations. Just kidding.
We are using Zulip for 300+ members in a makerspace, and at 40 members, we were not happy. Scaling to 300 never broke not being happy, since we all hate the UI ever since.
I cannot re-open Zulip threads, which are also issues with an atomic "solved/unresolved" state, unless I have elevated access. It is not a true forum like PHP forums, where we ask people to name threads, and you might just skip reading more than the title, or locate interesting threads by activity and find stickies about important announcements in a pull, not push, way of doing things.
It instead is a chat where a thousand group chats are open, and no once wants to read any of them.
If they wanted to re-invent forums, they should have cloned the "discourse" web app/forum. Still looks like shit on every platform, mobile or desktop, but at least does not break down on mobile.
I’ve started working at a company that uses Zulip and it’s by far the best thought out UX I’ve ever worked with in a communications app. Sure there’s some polish needed but the general structure just lets me get to where I want, gives me an overview of everything going on, and generally makes me happy. I wish for more keyboard shortcuts maybe, and the mobile app needs the recent conversations view, but I’m sure they’ll get there.
Replying to myself because I'm sure someone from Zulip will read this thread: I also wish for a tiered channel system. Instead of muting some, I'd like to promote some to high priority, so my inbox can toggle between the ones I really care about and a general overview.
Coming from Slack for a number of years, there is an initial shock of missing out of the 'slack way of things'.
The killer feature is everything is a stream/thread. I argue that is a better UX over Slack, but it takes some getting used it.
As mentioned, Slack is way more polished.
> recent conversations
I wish Zulip (and other apps) provided an inbox instead of just ephemeral notifications that disappear once a message is viewed. Lack of inbox means that I have to use unread messages as a way to manage my inbox -- because the moment I click on a notification / take a quick peek at a message there's no easy way to mark it for coming back to later.
----
+100 for Zulip though; by far the sanest messaging experience for this kind of context.
There is an Inbox view which you can make a default. You can also turn on setting to not mark messages as read automatically
I just had a look. I can absolutely understand parent. I’d want an option to include read messages in the inbox, not avoid marking as read. I want a history of stuff in my inbox, the same way discord, my RSS reader, and my email client work. All those have a read and unread state, but I can still see the read ones.
Everyone has values, until they get punched with a billion dollar check.
What companies value can change after they’ve grabbed their share. Just like how OpenAI changed their “constitution” about working with others.
I wish there was a way to hold companies accountable for stuff like that.
Zulip being fully open-source and self-hostable helps this. It's what the Bluesky team have been calling "credible exit", and Zulip has it way more than Bluesky does.
On the other hand, I would love to see more tech companies being co-operatives, where their members get a say in governance. That'd be the ultimate hard-mode for a business that was dedicated to being rugpull-resistant.
Agree on wanting to see more tech companies being cooperatives but not sure what you mean by this:
> That'd be the ultimate hard-mode for a business that was dedicated to being rugpull-resistant.
As nice as zulips aspirations may be, every time i have to use it for a community i effectively stop interacting with them after a short while just because everything is janky, ugly and feels like a drag to interact with, just tried opening it on my phone to see if it improved but the header ui is just plain broken.
Could you explain please what exactly is broken? How is it jot working and what are your particular expectations?
My perspective:
I have looked at the rust Zulip forums, which are bulky. But with moderation and rules and having people on the autistic spectrum [citation needed], it perhaps is usable for large organizations. Just kidding.
We are using Zulip for 300+ members in a makerspace, and at 40 members, we were not happy. Scaling to 300 never broke not being happy, since we all hate the UI ever since.
I cannot re-open Zulip threads, which are also issues with an atomic "solved/unresolved" state, unless I have elevated access. It is not a true forum like PHP forums, where we ask people to name threads, and you might just skip reading more than the title, or locate interesting threads by activity and find stickies about important announcements in a pull, not push, way of doing things.
It instead is a chat where a thousand group chats are open, and no once wants to read any of them.
If they wanted to re-invent forums, they should have cloned the "discourse" web app/forum. Still looks like shit on every platform, mobile or desktop, but at least does not break down on mobile.
hopefully zulip can become a slack/discord alternative
It already is!
(EDIT: unless your reason for using Discord is PTT voice channels. Then it's not.)