

Optimizely Open-Sources Guiders.js, a Library to Help You Guide New Users - dsiroker
http://blog.optimizely.com/introducing-guidersjs-an-open-source-guider-e

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bprater
Does anyone know of a good online catalog where libraries like this are
curated? Or are folks just bookmarking these as they find them?

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snaky
openjsan.org, JQuery plugins catalog, and that's all AFAIK.

(Yes, CPAN is still unique after so many years)

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JesseAldridge
<http://ruby-toolbox.com/> for ruby stuff

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snaky
Oh, not again.

1) It should be _one_ (and only one) location when you can find _every_
module/plugin/library written in %language%

Hmm, should I continue?

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JesseAldridge
?

Yes, obviously what you describe you would nice. But in the meantime, a few
scattered sources are better than nothing.

This is what I get for trying to be helpful...

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ma2rten
This is really great. We live in interesting times. It really gets easier to
make cool stuff every day with all those tools.

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dmitri1981
Does any know what other sites apart from Optimizely that use Guiders.js or
have a similar interactive tour? I have been developing something very similar
for my app and am very interested in seeing examples of how to best structure
the walk-through.

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daveungerer
OK, enough is enough. Now I have no choice but to scrap prototype in favour of
jQuery.

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spjwebster
I built a similar library on top of YUI called Feature Cue while I was at
Yahoo! Sadly it was never open sourced, got rewritten, over-engineered and (as
far as I know) faded into obscurity.

I'm glad the Optimizely guys have released their version, because based on our
user testing novice users really respond well to this kind of interactive
product tour.

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swah
This sounds like a great idea, but I (as a webapp user) would probably say "No
thanks" to the guide to take a first look at a website before trying to go
through a bunch of dialog boxes.

I wonder what % of users will go through a guide like this.

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iaskwhy
I believe you missed the point, this is to help users start interacting with
the app, it's not on the homepage. So as someone visiting the site you would
see if you like its idea or not and then, if you do, you would for instance
try a demo. That's where this kicks in, it helps you with your first actions.

It might make sense for some apps to use this directly on the homepage but
that would probably be the exception to the rule.

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swah
You're right - I made the exception the rule. Thanks for the clarification.

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ruethewhirled
Pretty cool, Would be good to make the jQuery dependency more prominent. Was
looking to create my own form of this but will use this instead. Does it
require jQuery UI library?

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dsiroker
Great point, we can add a note to the README in GitHub.

To answer your question, this library does NOT require the jQuery UI library.

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mindotus
If anyone is interested, we'd love to get some help with the Guiders.js --
please email john@min.us - would love to try this out!

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AndyNemmity
I just started using blockui for an attempt as a crude sort of Guider. Looking
into this now, thanks.

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MatthewPhillips
I love the idea of using this for new features. Consider me sold.

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dhbanes
Looks awesome, what version of jQuery is required?

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dsiroker
It should work great with jQuery 1.5.1 and later. We've heard reports that it
doesn't work well with jQuery 1.4.x but that is probably a bug we can fix
since it doesn't rely on any new jQuery features as far as I know.

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Pickhardt
That's correct.

I just tried loading it with jQuery 1.4.1 and got the error: "$.type is not a
function". So I replaced the $.type use with something else.

If using jQuery 1.4.x is important to you, you can download it again. I just
pushed the fix to GitHub.

