

Ask HN: Would you be interested in this web app help product? - Vindexus

I want to make a help dialog box plugin. The ui would look like this: http://twitpic.com/1209jh<p>Help would be organized into sections. Each section would have items attached to it. An item is a question/answer pair, or title/description.<p>Implementation would be really simple. You'd just include a CSS file and a JS file.<p>You would add a class and a hash tag to each anchor tag you would want to bring in the dialog.<p>Examples:
   &#60;a href="#section/regristration" class="helpwidget"&#62;Brings Up Regristration Dialog&#60;/a&#62;
   &#60;a href="#item/43" class="helpwidget"&#62;Brings Up Item 43&#60;/a&#62;
   &#60;a href="#item/email_verification" class="helpwidget"&#62;Brings Up Email Verification Dialog&#60;/a&#62;<p>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.<p>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.<p>Would anyone be interested in this? Would anyone here like to use something like that?
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patio11
You're pitching a product to technical users which can be duplicated with your
OSS lightbox script of choice (I like iBox) and about 45 seconds of effort. I
would think long and hard about what benefits you provide over including the
OSS lightbox script in return for asking for money and/or breaking my site
when you go down.

Incidentally, 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.)

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Vindexus
Well it wouldn't just be a UI box plugin for sale. It would include the
backend for editing and managing all your help text and FAQs. I'd also really
like to put in search, and possibly an "ask a question" form.

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.

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patio11
<http://www.bingocardcreator.com>

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.

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pedalpete
I think you need to still sort out what you are offering/selling. Rarely does
'I want to make a...' turn into a business. Come at it from the other
direction. 'People need ..., I can serve this need with...'.

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?

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csomar
+1 for the jQuery UI suite.

More than jQuery, there's Ext Js, which is quite extensive (and FREE)

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mping
Ext JS is not free. Ext JS is only free for open source projects, they are
dual licensed. They used to be free, but they "clarified" their rules.
<http://www.extjs.com/products/license.php>

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csomar
Don't forget that you are building this for programmers, so they already know
the open source alternative and may also prefer to code it from scratch.

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.

~~~
Vindexus
Yeah I thought about codecanyon. It could work for me, but when you start out
Envato (who runs codecanyon) gets a %60 cut. I'll definitely look into that
more though, could be worth it.

