Exactly. I had to reload the page to see it. Once I tried it out, it seemed like a pretty cool idea. It just needs some smoother execution.
The reload was one thing and others have mentioned the confusion of the "try it" button. Maybe a "Try It" arrow pointing to that lower left corner would help? Then change the original "Try It" to "Sign Up".
Edit: To note that the overall site seems pretty cool! Keep going...
This really confused me too, I could only see the "Try it" button and presumed it would give me a demo. I am not seeing it at all on the front page but do get this error:
Your demo is less than obvious. I thought the help bubble was just your site's logo. The "Try It" button takes all the fame. You need an arrow pointing at the help bubble that says something to the effect, "This is the demo. Click this."
Absolutely. Please be very careful who you trust when adding 3rd party JavaScript. They don't even have to malicious themselves, just get hacked on their end, and then all of their customers are compromised as well...
Exactly. I don't even use hosted libraries like jQuery from Google, I always host them myself. Also because it exposes my visitors to yet another tracking server if I use external sources.
The loading animation (aka "the swoosh maneuver") actually only happens on the front page of helpbubble.com -- it's intended to really draw your attention to it, since it's sort of the star of the show. When it's installed on your site, it's much more sedate. Fancy animations are easily added via JavaScript hackery, of course, if you so desire. :)
I voted you back up. HN has been suffering from a flight of noobs that downmod as a sign of disagreement but without voicing an opinion.
I agree with the animation bit, it's a little distracting. I disagree about the size of the box because users that need the most help likely won't notice a 16x16 box. Ideally both items are customizable.
My first reaction was "oh, the paperclip is back". But I do think this could be useful as long as it isn't annoying, and can be turned off easily for pro users.
Edit: I'm sure you guys felt the urge to add more features and customization right out of the gate, and I appreciate that you kept things simple. I see myself (and others) using this specifically because it looks so clean and lightweight.
Yeah that's what I expected. It didn't load for me first time (must be a bug, that's fine we all have bugs) so I clicked on the "Try It" button. I like it but would not use it as software as a service, but I would buy it especially if its API supported <insert favourite big web framework here (Django for me)>.
Firstly, excellent execution of a very useful little tool. I could really use something like this on my site.
That said, I think I could probably build a less polished version in about an afternoon, and having something native provides peace of mind and flexibility.
That's not to detract from your offering, but my hunch is that you'll find a good customer base in larger companies that have a hard time approving development of anything non-business critical. There's immediate appeal in quick integration and allowing the maintenance to be handled by a non-technical person.
I love it, and would happily pay money for it (please, tell me you are going to charge for this).
I was pacing around my apartment late last night trying to figure out how to quickly integrate help into my new product. I was convinced I was going to spend the time in rolling my own system rather than launching. Thanks to this, I'll be able to launch much sooner.
It's easy to say "I could write this in a few hours" (which I doubt), but why? Why would you waste cycles on something that is not core to your product?
Anyway, great job, and I can't wait to see where this goes.
I'd rather the initial animation slide up from the taskbar. and it would really be context sensitive if it could slightly buzz/vibrate/gain users attention in case it 'detects' that the user is stuck. what 'detects' actually is the context and could be configurable by the author based on wait time, scroll up-down, highlights of keywords etc. I can't think of a really fit example for this, but perhaps any web based application that requires specific input for relevant results such as mint.com?
This is great. Very useful, but it does take up a lot of space. I actually built something like this for my site, but ended up scrapping it since it was too much maintenance.
Each question is specific to the whole website OR a particular URL match. For example, you can configure a question to /login such as "How do I reset my password?"
You can also specify wildcards, such as /users/* etc.
I have no use for it but a way to close the help bubble besides clicking the icon again would be helpful. Like an [X] where there is normally an [X] on these kind of popups.
Busted left and right on Opera (10.51 on Win7). I assume you can update it as you please since you host it, so maybe it'd be better to just disable it on untested browsers.
Very nice. It doesn't work, though, when you open the website inside an iframe. You might be referring to the top window in your code rather than the current window object.
Not sure what it is yet, but I don't think I would open up my site to external JavaScript just for popup bubbles, to be honest.