Ask HN: Would you be interested in this web app help product?
Help would be organized into sections. Each section would have items attached to it. An item is a question/answer pair, or title/description.
Implementation would be really simple. You'd just include a CSS file and a JS file.
You would add a class and a hash tag to each anchor tag you would want to bring in the dialog.
Examples: <a href="#section/regristration" class="helpwidget">Brings Up Regristration Dialog</a> <a href="#item/43" class="helpwidget">Brings Up Item 43</a> <a href="#item/email_verification" class="helpwidget">Brings Up Email Verification Dialog</a>
I would like to release a free version where everything is hosted on my site, with limits on sections and items and it wouldn't be white label.
To make money I could have a monthly fee for more features, or I could sell the software itself so people could host it on their own servers.
Would anyone be interested in this? Would anyone here like to use something like that?
9 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 23.5 ms ] threadIncidentally, in terms of UI design, I think using a modal iBox here is probably a step backwards in many circumstances. Make it a tooltip instead. (You appear to be using this on another site. Instrument it, so that you know how many people click on the help, then actually succeed in asking a question. I predict that number will be vanishingly small.)
I'm sure a lot of people would say "I can just do this myself in X time". But if the product is good enough, and easy enough to implement, it would just make more sense to use this product. Sort of like how setting up a form is pretty trivial, but it might make more sense to use Wufoo or FormSpring to get a better form in less time.
The tooltips idea is a good point. Maybe that could be incorporated as well (if I do this)? I think that tooltips and FAQs serve different purposes though. Tooltips are more for "what is this thing right here?" and FAQs are more for stuff like "Okay, how do I do X?". Both are useful for confused visitors I think.
Edit: Do you have a site using iBox I could check out? None of the demos on their site appear to be working.
Click the big freaking image on the front page to see iBox in action. Sign up for the free trial (the purple button is the web app version, which is what you want) or log in as a guest, then create a bingo card and mouse over the preview image to see a tooltip. Alternatively, get to the customize bingo cards page to see tooltips applied to each of the customization options.
Incidentally, if you do the above, you will be participating in an A/B test of those tooltips, so I'm not positive what exactly you see. All the alternatives currently live show tooltips, but the way they do it is different. I relentlessly optimize for task success.
If websites need help sections, is the best product a 'help dialog box plugin'? How would you answer the help questions? Are you just providing a UI element? If so, what is that truly worth, when full suites like jQuery UI exist?
More than jQuery, there's Ext Js, which is quite extensive (and FREE)
That makes sense. I guess you could go with "web apps need accessible help, I can solve that with this."
The problem I have with most web app help is that when I click help, it takes me to a new page and lists ALL of the help items. I'd prefer it stay on the page I'm on, and only show the help items that are relevant to what I'm looking at. If I'm on the "User Groups" page and click "Help" I want FAQs about User Groups.
"Are you just providing a UI element?" No, that's just a good way to present the help (in my opinion).
Try to build something that bring value to the user. Check out codecanyon.com, they have lot of scripts. Some are successful and brings $1,000++ and some get a sale or two. But those are small scripts, and even when they are small, they are 600 or 700 line of PHP or JavaScript code.