

Hey HN: I made something to add Help to your startups. Thoughts? - markchristian
http://helpbubble.com

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Tichy
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.

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yungchin
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!

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Tichy
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.

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dabent
Exactly. I had to reload the page to see it. Once I tried it out, it seemed
like a pretty cool idea. It just needs some smoother execution.

The reload was one thing and others have mentioned the confusion of the "try
it" button. Maybe a "Try It" arrow pointing to that lower left corner would
help? Then change the original "Try It" to "Sign Up".

Edit: To note that the overall site seems pretty cool! Keep going...

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cwilson
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.

~~~
paraschopra
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.

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vaksel
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.

~~~
markchristian
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
Definitely communicate that then!

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Murkin
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)

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brianlash
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
I agree. It's pretty awesome.

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SteveC
"Your website visitors are really confused."

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

~~~
rrhyne
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
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)>.

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holdenc
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.

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covenant
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.

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stromhold
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?

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rksprst
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.

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paraschopra
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.

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FluidDjango
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) ___________?

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

~~~
markchristian
It's floating over northern Nunavut as we speak.

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

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paraschopra
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
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.

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djb_hackernews
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.

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ggruschow
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
Busted it is. Opera 10.51, Windows 7.

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waleedka
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.

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

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qeorge
He's not using either one.

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thenduks
The site itself is using jQuery.

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

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gibsonf1
I'm guessing you don't offer ssl?

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

