Brilliant and almost perfect. I will incorporate it into my project, next week. Thank you so much.
Most people here are asking for more features. Please be careful with that; it would be a pity to see such a pearl to swell into bloatware. You have very good taste, let it be your guide.
You could potentially build a commercial version of this on the same technology, if you wanted to keep the core of it lean. I know several people that would pay money to have this plus analytics about user progress and drop outs, user feedback etc.
I can't speak to the other one, but I will go on to say that Taurus is moving very fast. I was an early adopter, and while I don't use them anymore, I saw them go from a barebones product, to a barebones product with an on-site tutorial builder, to a fairly rich product with customizable themes, etc., in just a few weeks.
I can't speak for what they've done since I stopped using them, but looking at their homepage, the velocity still seems pretty high.
Love the concept, I've been looking for something like this and I'm already deploying it in my app.
Used today's commute to package it into introjs-rails, for anybody that wants to use this in their rails app (assuming you are using the RoR asset pipeline)
Hey, I just added intro.js to my project. One thing I noticed is the tooltip always shows up at the bottom. The most useful thing I can think of is supporting an attribute to display the tooltip on any side of the element.
I can link you to my project if you'd like to see how I use it. Just email me- mariusz.n.lapinski@gmail.com. My app isn't ready for prod just yet.
This is very nice but I have some suggestions to improve:
Navigation: The “next” link is very small and it's in different place on every step. A fixed navigation and/or bigger link would be nice.
Also, showing me that it's “Step 3” is useless to me - I can count myself and even if I couldn't, I don't really care how many steps I've already seen. I'm more interested in how many more there are.
There should also be automatic scrolling so that I could actually see the next highlighted area. If you already do the scrolling, remember to scroll in a way that guarantees to show whole area, not only top line.
Thanks for the great work, I think I might use it in my next projet!
I felt the same about the numbers appearing. It reminded me of the numbers that appear on my Facebook notifications/messages, and it made me feel like I needed to click/take some action with the number itself. It didn't really add anything to the experience though.
Other than that, I liked it. I especially appreciated the animated transition to the next step, where the "spotlight" flowed & resized forcing my eyes to follow.
I figured the manual scrolling was to train you to navigate the site. I guess scrolling automatically implies this, but maybe the former is more effective?
Just give them a less "active" default color and you're halfway there. As they are now, they seem to be asking for action. I'd also write "Step n of N" or simply "n/N" to help clear the meaning.
Congratulations on your good work, by the way. I don't usually vote TFAs up, but you totally deserve it.
Agreed. That, or put a small reminder on the first step (or on each step) that lets users know they can use the arrow keys. Seeing the arrow in 'Next→' was not intuitive for me (if that was intended to convey that you can change steps with →).
And it's from a guy in Tehran according to the meta info.
I'm pointing to this, because, even in tech forums I follow, some people believe Iranians are evil and they should be nuked or something.
Don't confuse what your local media say for each country (and how they choose to present it) with what the country actually is.
Don't even judge by the government of the other country (would Americans like to be judged by Bush or Nixon? Maybe Kissinger and Rove?).
And don't judge by your pre-determined cultural notions either. As a European, I abhor the death penalty, the practice of executing 15 year old children and protestant bible thumpers. Still I find the people of Texas mighty fine, including those that agree with those things, and not just the SXSW crowd. So I can also understand people in Iran (or whatever) having their own culture, religious etc and being backwards (to my view) in some regards.
Unless a country has done specific, unprovoked and tangible harm to another country, there is no reason to hate it at all. As for what happens INSIDE the country, it's mostly their thing to deal with.
If you're from a country with a decent visa situation (I.e. not the US or UK) I'd really recommend visiting Iran, its incredible and full of the friendliest people I've had the privilege to meet.
I've never once in my life met a person that sincerely thinks that each and every inhabitant of a country is evil when their leaders are.
By the way, "Iranians are evil" does not count, as it generally implies "most Iranians are evil", which, if you count it as a democracy (it is to some extent) and consider the elected leaders to be evil (a reasonable claim from a particular perspective), would be true.
I think the work done here is fansastic and presents a great alternative to the zurb joyride / jquery or zepto combination. I agree with some of the other comments about the usability on an ipad and mobile device as well as scrolling the screen to the focused element. I think larger targets would really help with this.
At this point in its development, if you are able to use jQuery or Zepto I think that Joyride 2 offers a much better UI / UX especially if you are planning to use Foundation 3/4.
Looks very cool but the fact that you have to hit the tiny "next" link makes it hard to use on iPad. It's compounded by the fact that the page isn't scrolling down all the way from step 1 to step2 so you have to scroll down manually.
On the computer, though, this looks slick and works reasonably well. Good job!
Cool project, love it when I see devs from Tehran publish their work on HN and become the top on the news with the current situation in Iran and the worst internet connection ever! Good job
I would suggest using the non-minified version of your library on the demo page, because programmers like me will want to look at the source in the fastest way possible, which is in the browser. (Your library is so small I don't think it will make much of a difference to bandwidth, and anyway you are cleverly using github as your static host.)
Only that at one point, to purchase the rights to that domain name, they effectively paid the Ghaddafi regime a small amount of money, and that they run a popular service that at any time could be hijacked by the current regime in Libya.
Certain TLDs have restrictions on their use, and .ca is one of those.
Many registration authorities choose to let anyone buy their domains because it's a big source of income. Libya is one of those (or always used to be. Since the revolution it's been less clear).
Not at all, I just find it odd. Having a fancy URL is great, but the restrictions in place on certain domains are there for a reason and should be respected.
I was trying to build something like this and what stopped me from finishing it was handling z-index of different stacking contexts, I couldn't make it work on all cases, from the code it seems you put a very high z-index to the displayed section, which was my approach as well, but on different stacking contexts, I found out that sometimes no matter how high is your z-index, it will still be dependent on the parent stacking context, I guess I could have just released it (it was a jQuery plugin) as it was probably going to work for 99% of the use cases.
This is - quite simply - one of the coolest things I have seen in a while. "In game" tutorials are such a fantastic way of demonstrating functionality in that sector - why shouldn't websites be the same ?
One item of feedback: the styling of the numbers look nearly identical to the feedback badge on iOS, which made me think for a second that it was some sort of alert, rather than a step in a sequence. Obviously the styling is customizable by the developer, but as a default, I could see it being confusing to iOS users.
Edit: one more tidbit: resizing the browser doesn't force the box(es) to resize. Admittedly an edge case. :)
Yeah correct, there's a problem when you resize the browser. In the next versions I calculate all box(s) position again to keep focus element helper layer updated.
The HN effect: Visited the project 3-4 hours ago, and it had 40 stargazers, now 650. :)
I really like it by the way, and I think I'll use it for my next project. How about some events though? Like `introJs.on('5', fn)` would execute `fn` when the fifth hint is shown. It could be used to introduce several views to the user (one page app).
The next button could be way bigger though, I felt like I was trying to catch it every time :)
And maybe you can pre-focus on it with JS, so you'd give users the affordance that they can press enter to move on. (You enabled the right arrow key, but I didn't immediately know I could do it).
Overall though its nice to see a non jQuery plugin! And it's very nicely done.
Could use some finessing, on Opera there appears to be a white square/rectangle that appears on the next element for the second and third ones (not sure why). Then it disappears. Maybe it's an Opera thing.
The styles that get applied to the element inside of the "white box" get applied before the white box moves. This is noticeable for the links in the top right. They turn light blue before the box even moves. It should be after the box has moved, since that kind of stuff is pretty much instant.
Just curious ... why is it nice to see a non-jQuery plugin? Isn't the point of jQuery that it's tested and standardized for all browsers, thus theoretically reducing the odds that a plugin won't work on any given browser?
Just one thing. I pressed the Enter key thinking that it would take me to the next step (like the right-arrow), but the page background went darker. And, each successive press of Enter made it even darker. I actually liked the effect (even if it was unintended) as it increased the contrast between the step being focused and the rest of the page.
However, I found no way to get back to original page after all the steps are completed (by right-arrow navigation). Pressing ESC had no effect.
I really like this. I think it would be neat to see a discrete help button or toggle switch, that allows novice users to go into a help mode overlayed on top of a live web app.
Aha, good idea for JSON (but I think attribute is a good one for some frameworks like ExtJs that you don't know your element id or something like that).
What you need by "senario"? Could you please explain it more?
Yea, the support team want multiple scenarios (intros) in a page, we use a param, so they can link to it and push them to users asking how to do stuff,
it becomes for us like an advanced, usable, faq system
Good work. It would be cool if you could also scroll the browser window. For example, in my the I need to scroll down to see the 2nd bubble and up to see the following.
As others have already suggested: I think it would be even better if the explanation box was fixed (e.g. top left corner of the screen) and had a FAT red arrow pointing to the area of the screen that it explains.
This would (imho) make it more obvious what's going on ("Ah, this is explaining that") and would improve usability.
But either way, this is a great start (I love the limelight-effect) and we are definitely going to build on this. Thank you for open sourcing it!
Very nicely done. I find interesting how an intro of this kind makes clearer information that is already to be found within the site itself; it doesn't create new information, it just forces the user to focus on the different areas of the site. I can't help but think we are trained to ignore when we can't see what's on the screen unless the site forces focus over the different areas.
I'd recommend that you make a block link out of the text bubble that contains your 'next' link. Honing in on the actual word 'next' slowed me down.
For especially... uninitiated (?) web/computer users I could see there being an issue wherein the text bubble containing 'next' is cut off by the bottom boundary of the browser window.
Just recently I had to make a series of screenshots to walk someone through something. Great weekend project.
Neat! Fantastic first version! It has lots of potential. I love how it's not tied to jQuery. And I agree with what some of the others have said - it's possible you could build a freemium service with this. I don't know how ample that opportunity is though.
Here's another feature request to your list too: Have the word bubbles remain in the viewport, or scroll so they are always in view.
I was recently part of a brainstorming session where it was decided that we needed something that could do exactly this. (The way we described it: something like the "Joyride" feature in Zurb Foundation, except it could also highlight the relevant section.)
Keep this simple and fix a few of the bugs, and I think you have a winner.
Very almost perfect. The only issue I have is with its scrolling - when it scrolls down it only scrolls enough to show the highlighted area, not the textbox underneath it with information. 1366x768 resolution if that matters.
Amazing work, mate! I will definitely use it really soon on Javascript 2d Games to show how to play the games. If you are looking at monetizing it, you could sell it as a plugin for Crafty.js for instance
My suggestion: take all the presentation. Make it less graphical and more scalable, lets say i dont want red circle with number i want just the overlay part.
We built something similar like this based on jQuery Impromptu and merged it together with HowlerJS. This way we have a nice website walkthrough with voice if desired.
Any chance you guys released that as open source? This is exactly what I want. Would be even better if it animated the boxes, so that the users eye is drawn to what you're showing them.
great work, i feel like the rest the next link is to small, and even if you try to navegate with arrows <-, -> and works some other mechanic like (enter/click/tap) to keep going and then (esc/del/back) to avoid the intro, but its a great aid as it is right now a friend of me built something like this (not that good), from zero to his app but now everyone can have this, going to recommend it.
Thanks abailin for plugging my startup! Guys this solution is really cool, and I love the "spotlighting" animation. When it comes to flexibility you definitely cannot compete with implementing a simple library like this. Nevertheless, for ease of installation and for a bunch more amazing features I highly recommend you check out http://tutorialize.me. Fully hosted, asynchronous, installed in minutes, full markup (mustache.js) and CSS editing, Cross browser support, and a sweet dashboard with tutorial analytics. PEACE!
He means that if intro instructs the user click here, and the browser goes to another page from within the same intro scope, then intro would pick up and continue.
Maybe step 1-3 is on "start.html" and step 4-6 is on "anotherpage.html". So when the user clicks next from step 3, he should be redirected to anotherpage.html and the intro continues.
I got it, I got it. Good idea, I think you submitted an issue on Github also, right?
Thanks for the awesome suggestion, in the next versions we will have that also.
You are changing the z-index of the "focused" element but you need to check if one of the parents have z-index defined already because in that case the effect doesn't work.
Instead of looking for a workaround I would suggest that since you are already aiming for modern browsers maybe you should use SVG (clip-path) with CSS {pointer-events: none} so you have a real "hole" and you could use 4 dummy divs if you want to disable interaction with non-focused elements.
Regarding usabili.ca, the domain you're using... If you're "three geeks in Tehran", you really shouldn't be using a Canadian domain. Unless you're Canadians, or are incorporated within Canada.
Unnecessary. There are plenty of .in or .it domains that have nothing to do with India or Italy. It's just a domain name and it's inevitable that people will use it in new ways.
Not all country-level TLDs are administered in the same way. According to Wikipedia, there are no restrictions on .in domains, and .it domains are only available to EU residents.
Most people here are asking for more features. Please be careful with that; it would be a pity to see such a pearl to swell into bloatware. You have very good taste, let it be your guide.