Show HN: How We Built an Extensible Tour System for Streak

blog.streak.com

25 points·alooPotato··6 comments

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We did something similar.

Configuration file with sections/selectors of the feature to highlight [1].

Model to determine if the user has unseen "tutorials" [2].

JavaScript to show an indicator that new features exist [3][4].

It looks like this, http://imgur.com/a/ZWaHV

[1] https://github.com/photo/frontend/blob/development/src/html/...

[2] https://github.com/photo/frontend/blob/development/src/libra...

[3] https://github.com/photo/frontend/blob/development/src/html/...

[4] https://github.com/usablica/intro.js

Why bother making this from scratch? There are tons of tour plugins and companies that have sprouted in the past few months.

Right now the landscape is split between startups providing the service and jquery/bootstrap plugins.

The startup offerings don't work for us since we're inside of Gmail which presents a unique technical challenge in regards to loading javascript, etc.

The libraries have the issue of things being "hard coded" meaning it becomes too difficult and annoying to make lots of tour variations, or do A/B testing.

Ahh. Great answer, makes sense now.

Here's one that uses Selenium for recording the tour steps with Drupal used for managing the tour content (the site being 'toured' doesn't have to be running Drupal). http://walkthrough.it/

I just wanted to say, I LOVE your product - it's simple yet flexible...and it lives right where I need it. :)

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