

Show HN: Visualize every GitHub push with Awesomebox - brendanib
http://awesomebox.co

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mbesto
Ummm, I'm pretty sure this is exactly what I need right now. Kudos. Currently
our process is:

1) I mockup the design in Balsamiq

2) My designer creates the design in HTML/CSS and then pushes to git (using
grunt/node/bower)

3) We screenshot and annotate using InvisionApp

4) repeat 3 and 4 until design looks good

If I understand correctly:

\- This will load up my grunt server automatically based on the latest push to
github

\- I can then annotate that HTML/CSS front-end to my designer for feedback
changes.

\- No more screenshotting for me?!? This would be amazing.

Any chance you can integrate to Bitbucket? :)

EDIT: If so, please get in touch - happy to be your early evangelist and
provide more feedback.

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brendanib
I can't tell you how happy this makes me. Let's talk!

To answer your questions:

"This will load up my grunt server automatically based on the latest push to
github"

Almost - we'll serve the build directory that your gruntfile creates. We are
thinking about running your grunt or gulp tasks for you, so that you don't
have to commit your builds to git. I'd love to hear more about your setup and
see what we can do to make it work.

"I can then annotate that HTML/CSS front-end to my designer for feedback
changes."

Yes.

"No more screenshotting for me?!? This would be amazing."

Yup, that's the idea :)

"Any chance you can integrate to Bitbucket? :)"

We want to. Signup or email me at brendan@awesomebox.co and let's talk.

~~~
mbesto
Just got off g-hangout with Brendan. A+ for customer development ;)

As soon as bitbucket comes on board we're customers. Good luck boys.

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deedubaya
Uh, why not just use Github issues and your normal screen capture tools?

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brendanib
Great question - here's a few problems that Matt and I have encountered with
Github issues and screenshots:

1) Clients, managers and other "non-developers" usually don't have Github
accounts. When we tried making them use Github Issues, most of the time they'd
use it for a week and then go back to emailing us or just stop giving
feedback.

2) When new code is pushed to Github, how do you show non-developers? Usually
this requires maintaining staging servers. What if you want to show different
things to three different people? Three servers to maintain. With Awesomebox,
you don't have to worry about this - we could even send them notifications to
check out new versions, so that you don't have to bug them.

3) It's hard to keep screenshots and their associated conversations organized
- it requires a lot of discipline, and when building things I've found that I
tend to lose track of UI/UX feedback overtime, even if it's within an issue
tracker.

4) Not all feedback is an "issue" or a bug. Github Issues are great, but are
designed to track problems, not to help people discuss ideas or provide
positive feedback.

I hope that helps answer your question - just a few of the reasons that Matt
and I started working on Awesomebox. I'd love to hear more about how you work
with people who aren't developers, and if our product doesn't fit your needs,
tell us what we could do better. Feel free to reach out -
brendan@awesomebox.co

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jmscharff2
I tried to register, and when I get the email and try to fill out the last 2
fields (username and name) it tells me my email address is already taken...not
sure how that is possible...

~~~
mattinsler
Please email us at contact@awesomebox.co so we can straighten this out!

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doublerebel
Looks great! Tools usable by non-developers are often also more useful for
developers, and that looks like the case here.

Any plans for Gitlab integration, either through Gitlab webhooks or a standard
post-receive hook? All of my (and many other developers') private repos are
privately hosted in Gitlab. I would be happy to help if needed to patch Gitlab
and make this work.

Also, what about getting information out of Awesomebox? Will it post via
webhook to another service?

~~~
brendanib
Thanks!

Our goal is to integrate with your source control, no matter where it's
hosted. Anything that can send us a webhook should work just fine - just a
matter of timing for us to build the integration. Email me at
brendan@awesomebox.co and let's talk.

As far as getting information out of Awesomebox, you're the first person to
ask - what type of information would you want? There's a few use cases we've
thought of, but I'd love to hear your ideas first.

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cocoflunchy
This looks cool, too bad it's JS only. I guess the next step could be native
mobile apps?

Found a typo: Maintenence instead of Maintenance.

~~~
brendanib
Thanks for catching that!

There are some massive and unsolved engineering challenges to going beyond
HTML/CSS/JS, but in an ideal world we'd love to make this work for any app,
including native mobile apps.

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RaphiePS
Maybe some sort of integration with [https://app.io/](https://app.io/) ?

~~~
brendanib
Whoa, that's amazing, thanks for sharing that. I'll check it out.

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mrmch
This is really awesome... have to figure out a way to get it to work with our
python/django stack. Maybe for landing/un-authenticated pages.

Kudos to Matt and Brendan on the landing page design -- very few "Show HN"
landing pages actually convey what the product does!

~~~
brendanib
Thanks! Let's take a stab at getting you setup with something small tomorrow
;)

It's funny that you said that about our landing page, because before this, we
were probably the most egregious offender of having landing pages that didn't
convey what we did. Takes a lot of work to find the right words and
presentation, and we still want to make it better.

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alimoeeny
Why do you need to manage my Google contacts? why do you need to access my
private repos on github?

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jlafon
This question needs to be answered. It is NOT ok for apps like this to request
blanket access to manage our contacts with no explanation. Edit: Thanks for
the explanation.

~~~
brendanib
Completely agree - our apologies for not making this explicit. See my answer
above for why we ask for the permissions we do.

Part of the challenge is that, during the auth dialog, there's no way for us
to explain why we're asking for permissions. This is true across every oAuth
identity provider I've done integrations with - they don't give you a way to
explain why you ask for something like "Manage Contacts".

For that reason, when we ask you to connect to Github, directly below the
button we link to a page about security (right now only visible to logged in
users, sorry about that):

[http://awesomebox.co/security](http://awesomebox.co/security)

We should probably do the same whenever we ask for access to your Google
Account. Really appreciate the feedback.

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Xymak1y
What is it with requiring at least 6 character usernames? Why does it matter
to an automated system if I use less? I get that a username with only one
letter isn't optimal, but I don't see why it can't be > 3.

~~~
mattinsler
This has to do with keeping some words reserved or just off-limits. For
example, some 4-letter words would not be preferred as usernames, as well as
things like login, auth, etc.

~~~
Xymak1y
Right, so make 5 the minimum then and reserve certain words. I guess I can
always use usernames such as "administration", "dashboard" or "profile",
right? I believe setting a minimum of 6 letters is a questionnable approach to
this problem.

~~~
brendanib
Totally understandable - we don't want to exclude you based on the number of
characters in your desired username. We just don't have a good set of all the
words we need to reserve upfront - what we really want to avoid is ever
forcing someone to change their username because of a conflict like this.

We'll see what we can do to allow shorter usernames without ending up in this
situation. Thanks for the feedback.

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iamkoby
Wow guys! This is just cool! And the site is beautiful! Congrats!

~~~
mattinsler
Thanks so much! We hope you like the product!

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matchu
What are sections B and C of the Terms of Service? Are those the sections
where I sign away my soul? :P

~~~
brendanib
Haha, oops, just an editing mistake leaving those out. Thanks for finding that
typo.

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borski
Does this work with something like a Rails app that has partials and the like?
This looks really cool.

~~~
brendanib
Thanks!

Awesomebox only works with client-side code that runs in a browser -
HTML/CSS/JS. If you have a Rails app that serves up a "single-page" app (like
Angular, Backbone, Ember, etc.), we can work with you to make Awesomebox work.
If this applies to what you're building, email me at brendan@awesomebox.co and
we'll do our best to get you running with Awesomebox.

In an ideal world, we'd be able to support literally any application - Rails,
Django, even iOS and Android apps. But in order to make your code available
without spinning up complex environments and rebuilding parts of Heroku, we're
focused on people building client-side javascript apps that send and receive
data via APIs. This category of apps is growing incredibly fast, and we think
there's a lot we can do to help, as both Matt and I have spent the past year
working in Backbone and Angular.

Does that help explain a bit?

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imwhimsical
<insert 'shut up and take my money' meme here>

~~~
brendanib
:) - could you email me at brendan@awesomebox.co? I'd love to hear more about
what you think!

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indexzero
Congrats Matt

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sdnguyen90
no SSL on signup page?

