Hey HN: I made something to add Help to your startups. Thoughts?

by markchristian • 16 years ago

87 47 16 years ago

brianlash• 16 years ago

Wow. This is really, really awesome.

Edit: I'm sure you guys felt the urge to add more features and customization right out of the gate, and I appreciate that you kept things simple. I see myself (and others) using this specifically because it looks so clean and lightweight.

joshu• 16 years ago

I agree. It's pretty awesome.

vaksel• 16 years ago

I think the loading animation is too much. It'll be better if it just pops up.

Also I think this is taking up too much real estate, it should probably just be a 16x16 pixel image with a ? on it.

mdolon• 16 years ago

You should totally make the animation/design customizable too so I can finally have my own talking paperclip!

pxlpshr• 16 years ago

I voted you back up. HN has been suffering from a flight of noobs that downmod as a sign of disagreement but without voicing an opinion.

I agree with the animation bit, it's a little distracting. I disagree about the size of the box because users that need the most help likely won't notice a 16x16 box. Ideally both items are customizable.

My first reaction was "oh, the paperclip is back". But I do think this could be useful as long as it isn't annoying, and can be turned off easily for pro users.

devinj• 16 years ago

Noobs can't downvote. ;)

codexon• 16 years ago

It has to be somewhat large and noticeable. If its too small people won't even notice it.

markchristian3• 16 years ago

The loading animation (aka "the swoosh maneuver") actually only happens on the front page of helpbubble.com -- it's intended to really draw your attention to it, since it's sort of the star of the show. When it's installed on your site, it's much more sedate. Fancy animations are easily added via JavaScript hackery, of course, if you so desire. :)

palish• 16 years ago

Definitely communicate that then!

paraschopra3• 16 years ago

Is it specific to a webpage or whole website?

Another note: http://www.kissinsights.com/ is somewhat on similar model, though it is a survey.

dustball• 16 years ago

Each question is specific to the whole website OR a particular URL match. For example, you can configure a question to /login such as "How do I reset my password?"

You can also specify wildcards, such as /users/* etc.

holdenc• 16 years ago

Firstly, excellent execution of a very useful little tool. I could really use something like this on my site.

That said, I think I could probably build a less polished version in about an afternoon, and having something native provides peace of mind and flexibility.

That's not to detract from your offering, but my hunch is that you'll find a good customer base in larger companies that have a hard time approving development of anything non-business critical. There's immediate appeal in quick integration and allowing the maintenance to be handled by a non-technical person.

gibsonf1• 16 years ago

I'm guessing you don't offer ssl?

markchristian3• 16 years ago

Not at this point, but it's definitely on the todo list.

rksprst• 16 years ago

This is great. Very useful, but it does take up a lot of space. I actually built something like this for my site, but ended up scrapping it since it was too much maintenance.

cwilson• 16 years ago

Girlfriend reaction: "Wasn't this in Microsoft Word 10 years ago? It had a cute dog."

Take that for what you may.

Cool concept, but I don't think this is something I'd ever pay for. GetSat or Uservoice could kill this in one update.

There is just something about it that would bug me having it on the page.

paraschopra3• 16 years ago

Never judge a startup by where it is now. Judge a startup where it could be six months down the line.

Of course, this equally applies to GetSat and Uservoice too.

jf2• 16 years ago

Where is the bubble to help Canada assert its sovereignty over Hans Island?

markchristian3• 16 years ago

It's floating over northern Nunavut as we speak.

jf2• 16 years ago

Are you sure it isn't a spaceship built by a teenage boy with designs that came to him in a dream?

paraschopra3• 16 years ago

Quick additions that you can consider:

* A default option whereby a visitor can ask question which isn't listed on a page.

* A simple 'did this answer help you' under each answer. Like what Google does on its support pages.

* Some basic stats like how many visitors clicked the help bubble and how many got their question answered.

The three options above will provide you will insights whether you are answering the right question.

stromhold• 16 years ago

I'd rather the initial animation slide up from the taskbar. and it would really be context sensitive if it could slightly buzz/vibrate/gain users attention in case it 'detects' that the user is stuck. what 'detects' actually is the context and could be configurable by the author based on wait time, scroll up-down, highlights of keywords etc. I can't think of a really fit example for this, but perhaps any web based application that requires specific input for relevant results such as mint.com?

waleedka• 16 years ago

Very nice. It doesn't work, though, when you open the website inside an iframe. You might be referring to the top window in your code rather than the current window object.

FluidDjango2• 16 years ago

Just curious: what guided you to use Prototype rather than, say, jQuery?

qeorge• 16 years ago

He's not using either one.

thenduks• 16 years ago

The site itself is using jQuery.

FluidDjango2• 16 years ago

FYI: With FF & Safari/4.05 I find that long Help questions expand beyond their containers (in the actual help response). Just a cosmetic issue FWIW.

PS: Do you know whether your pricing model will be 1) Per site? 2) Per traffic? 3) ___________?

Murkin• 16 years ago

This is great !

BUT, as with other 95% of the tools out there. I cannot use it. Because it does not support localization.

Can you allow for changing the text in buttons & captions ? (Moving the box RTL will be great too)

ggruschow• 16 years ago

Busted left and right on Opera (10.51 on Win7). I assume you can update it as you please since you host it, so maybe it'd be better to just disable it on untested browsers.

clusterfu_k• 16 years ago

Busted it is. Opera 10.51, Windows 7.

Tichy4• 16 years ago

Couldn't you provide a demo without me having to change the source code of my web site?

Not sure what it is yet, but I don't think I would open up my site to external JavaScript just for popup bubbles, to be honest.

yungchin• 16 years ago

The demo is right there on their website - bottom left corner.

Edit: apologies, that was such a short reply that it's at risk of coming across as snarky, but no such intent!

Tichy4• 16 years ago

Just checked - it seems it doesn't appear every time I load the site, therefore I missed it the first time. Try reloading the site a couple of times.

_Lemon_• 16 years ago

This really confused me too, I could only see the "Try it" button and presumed it would give me a demo. I am not seeing it at all on the front page but do get this error:

Error: $("#haas").offset() is null Source File: http://www.helpbubble.com/ Line: 33

Edit: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.15) Gecko/2009102814 Iceweasel/3.0.6 (Debian-3.0.6-3)

bricestacey• 16 years ago

Your demo is less than obvious. I thought the help bubble was just your site's logo. The "Try It" button takes all the fame. You need an arrow pointing at the help bubble that says something to the effect, "This is the demo. Click this."

endlessvoid94• 16 years ago

Why not? Security concern?

Tichy4• 16 years ago

Yes, security concerns.

SteveC• 16 years ago

"Your website visitors are really confused."

No, your website visitors are really confused. i.e. me

rrhyne• 16 years ago

Offer a few helpful points with that and I wounld't have voted you down.

You could have said: TRY IT should open a help bubble. Add a GET IT button to get the code.

hartror• 16 years ago

Yeah that's what I expected. It didn't load for me first time (must be a bug, that's fine we all have bugs) so I clicked on the "Try It" button. I like it but would not use it as software as a service, but I would buy it especially if its API supported <insert favourite big web framework here (Django for me)>.

covenant• 16 years ago

I love it, and would happily pay money for it (please, tell me you are going to charge for this).

I was pacing around my apartment late last night trying to figure out how to quickly integrate help into my new product. I was convinced I was going to spend the time in rolling my own system rather than launching. Thanks to this, I'll be able to launch much sooner.

It's easy to say "I could write this in a few hours" (which I doubt), but why? Why would you waste cycles on something that is not core to your product?

Anyway, great job, and I can't wait to see where this goes.

djb_hackernews• 16 years ago

I have no use for it but a way to close the help bubble besides clicking the icon again would be helpful. Like an [X] where there is normally an [X] on these kind of popups.

bravura• 16 years ago

Who did the design for your site? I really like it.

Hey HN: I made something to add Help to your startups. Thoughts?

Related Stories