

Show HN: Interactive “how to” guide and tutorial builder - khadim
http://whatfix.com/

======
hluska
I really wanted to try this out, but when I went to install the plugin, it
asked for all data on all the websites that I visit. As a general rule, I
won't allow plugins that much access unless they do something truly amazing.

If I were you, I'd improve the messaging on the page a to let people know they
are about to download a plugin, and what kinds of permissions you are going to
ask for (and why).

~~~
varakumar_n
"All data on All sites" access needed for us as we try to show help inside any
website.

You are right about messaging on permissions. We need to figure out a place
for explaining rights requirement to user.

------
qeorge
The end product is great. Very clear and unambiguous tutorials. I think you've
definitely hit on a pain point.

Making it easy/quick to create walkthroughs for any screen in my product would
be very useful. Right now we are making one-off Javascript based tours, which
work well but are time-consuming to produce and brittle.

Suggestion: as an alternative to the YouTube-style embed, perhaps there could
be a small tab on the bottom of the screen (like a Live Chat or Feedback
widget) that says "Help With This Screen". When clicked, it could reveal a
ribbon with several tutorials for the current screen.

This would be helpful for complicated screens, which might have potentially
several tutorials. For example, GoDaddy could make 10 interactive tutorials to
go with the 1 screen DNS manager - one for changing an A record, one for
nameservers, and so on - and have them all available on the DNS manager screen
without taking up a lot of space.

Nice work!

~~~
khadim
:) we hit upon whatfix due to pain we felt while working with users in our
previous product.

we are trying to keep flow creation simple, so that anyone can create new
flows within minutes. you can try creating flows for your product and use
embed option to add them.

------
khadim
On clicking 'Run', whatfix provide instructions inline to websites.

Here's 3 mins video:
[http://youtu.be/xm2ly9qTXkM](http://youtu.be/xm2ly9qTXkM)

"whatfix is community website, where anyone can create, share & execute
interactive guides on any website or web applications."

We think whatfix can be used to create howto's, some initial traction
reflected as good tutorial builder, what can be best way? Any suggestions. Any
comments/feedback on whatfix greatly appreciated!

If anyone is interested to try out private beta, you are most welcome, just
add your email id to [http://whatfix.com/](http://whatfix.com/) & you would
get invite in couple of days.

------
digitalengineer
Have a look at the 99 responses on HN for Iorad, a tutorial builder from India
I think. I'm sure they will help. (tip: no plugin required)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4202941](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4202941)

~~~
varakumar_n
Thanks for the link, we have gone through iorad before. "RUN" is the key in
whatfix.com. It is not only the builder for snapshots. By RUN, help is shown
inside actual webpage & drives you through to complete the action/guide.

~~~
digitalengineer
Thank you. I was surprised to see Firefox asking permission to install a
plugin at first. (So I denied access). What about a little firefox plugin icon
or a little visual hint what to expect?

~~~
varakumar_n
Now, for chrome users we are displaying a video when they choose not to
install extension. Yet to do something for Firefox users.

~~~
tedmiston
This is good. If the video were the first thing on the page I would have
watched it first anyway, and then not been confused by the "run" button asking
to install a plugin.

------
BWStearns
Cool concept. Given the quantity of programming/tech tutorials out there I can
definitely see a tool like this being useful. Kind of a midway point between
text and a screencast. Good luck.

~~~
khadim
we want to provide interactive help inline to websites/webapps, unlike
screencast or verbose howto's. Any guide in whatfix can be made interactive to
get inline help by installing browser plugin and running the guide.

------
tomw1808
pretty cool idea, but would be even better if there is no need to download a
plugin. I can imagine, without the need of a plugin, that there is a great
userbase in short time. Reminds me a little bit of [1] just with the tutorial
information from outside...

Keep on!

[1] [http://foundation.zurb.com/files/zurb-
joyride-2/demo/demo.ht...](http://foundation.zurb.com/files/zurb-
joyride-2/demo/demo.html)

~~~
khadim
we want anyone to create interactive guides on any website, like Gmail,
facebook, so to run over such sites, plugin is necessary. Same plugin is also
used for creating guides, so encouraging plugins, will help in more
contribution of guides.

~~~
nsomaru
How do you intend on keeping track of change to sites? Eg, Gmail tutorials for
the old compose interface will soon be rendered obsolete.

How will you deal with aging, increasingly inaccurate content? The rot will be
slow and correction will be tedious.*

Ranking also seems relevant if you choose to go the 'social proof via up
votes' route.

A content community (which I believe something like this is trying to create)
is great. A content community that curates itself is just awesome.

*edit, previously: "How will you deal with aging, old, inaccurate content?" [added content rot as an after thought, 'aging' describes the reason for the 'inaccuracy' (rot) ]

Disclaimer: this is posted from mobile. Haven't had a chance to give the
plugin a spin.

~~~
khadim
Yes, we are trying to build content community which can curate and update. we
have reputations like stackoverflow.

We have also implemented failure tracking mechanism to check when guides don't
execute correctly. Failure tracking feature is pre-mature as of now, once
tracking improves, we will mark it for community to improve the guides or
discard them.

~~~
nsomaru
A thought: one way to do this might be having a service diffing the HTML of
whatever page guide X is for. For things like Facebook your diff would have to
be smart enough to differentiate between 'content' and 'structure'. You could
then flag guides based on that. But I imagine most guides are
written/maintained in-house so this isn't a problem at this point.

Where do you guys work from?

~~~
khadim
We collect lots of information about the element that we need to highlight
(text, depth, siblings etc). When we fail to identify element accurately, we
try to find best one with highest score and highlight. We mark flow as a
failure and exit, when we hit score below minimum. This algorithm is most
crucial one & i guess it will be evolving ever. By this mechanism, we are
trying to overcome page changes to good extent.

Very few guides are in house and mostly are contributed by early adopters. we
are expecting users to contribute.

We are based out of bangalore, india.

------
grrrando
Comic Sans?

~~~
varakumar_n
helvetica. comic sans just one place while trying to get attention on "run".
Didnt like it?

