
Show HN: Record Heat Maps of your PDF document usage - wsieroci
Hi,<p>I have created tool (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.helprange.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.helprange.com</a>) to record usage of your PDF documents to display heat maps of this usage consisting of exact clicks and position of mouse inside the document.<p>It works as follows:<p>1. You are uploading your PDF Document<p>2. You are getting a secure link to your document<p>3. You share this link with some group of people<p>4. When someone opens the link then it can view your document inside special PDF viewer inside the browser<p>5. We are recording how people are engaging with your document and we can show you the heat map<p>What do you think?<p>This post is a follow up to my previous &quot;Show HN&quot; here (I did not provide a heat map back then).<p>Best,
Wiktor
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snazz
Interesting idea, and the implementation looks good. However, is a document
heatmap actually an effective indicator of where my attention is? My mouse
does not usually follow my eyes but stays in place as I use the scroll ring.

Am I the only one who just leaves my mouse in place?

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magicalhippo
On webpages I often highlight text as I read it. It helps to keep track in
case I get distracted for a second.

But I almost never do for PDFs as selection is frequently quite wonky or
impossible, so it has never become a habit.

Also, I'm curious why one would want to know the attention heatmap of a PDF?
Like what's the use-cases? I looked at the webpage but I still don't get it.
Then again I'm not in sales so...

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chatmasta
> On webpages I often highlight text as I read it.

I do that too, and it's really annoying to read medium.com because it thinks
I'm trying to leave a comment every time I highlight and double click a region
of text.

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saagarjha
I find it kind of humorous that your testimonial appears to be written by you.

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aaachilless
I'm pretty sure it's a quote from the co-founder, Wiktor. There's a picture of
him with his name just below the quote.

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saagarjha
Yeah, I get that; it’s just that testimonials are usually written by users of
the software, right?

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aaachilless
Yeah I agree it's a bit idiosyncratic.

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gruez
>[https://www.helprange.com/static/images/final_menu_bars.png](https://www.helprange.com/static/images/final_menu_bars.png)

IANAL, but this image you have is probably dicey when it comes to trademark
use. At the very least there should be a disclaimer saying that they're not
clients and they do not endorse your product.

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sdan
Probably would use it. However, I'm just a student and definitely cannot
afford $45/month. Looks like I'll just have to hope many people look at my
Arxiv papers :).

