Comment by vtail | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vtail | Hacker News Reader

Congratulations on releasing Mjolnir!

Here is some feedback: I have never heard of Mjolnir, or Hydra, before. I visited the page you linked and skimmed through. Here is what I learnt:

- That it's a "Lightweight automation and productivity power-tool for OS X"

- How to try it out

- How to uninstall it, or install it to $HOME

- How to install it's doc sets

- How to work with modules

- FAQ on some very technical questions

- Some high-level phylosophical comparison with other apps ("Mjolnir is more modularized, Slate is more all-in-one")

- Thanks, technical changes, license etc.

I still have no idea what is it, what problems could it solve and what are some typical examples of automation, apart from a single paragraph"start writing some fun staff" in "Try it out" section.

I'm certainly interested in automating tasks on my Mac, but after reading the landing page I have no idea what kinds of tasks it could be. Is it better that Automator? How does it compare? Is it better then writing shell scripts? etc.

If I were you, I would spend 70% of the page to explain what someone can accomplish with Mjolnir and why they should care, and 30% (or less) on the technical stuff. May be I'm not an intended audience.

Can't emphasize this stuff enough. What problems does it solve for the user? It's described in very general terms, which I'm going to assume is because it's a general-purpose tool that can solve many problems. Show some of them! Are they problems people already solve in a different way? Show why yours is better.

Thanks to both of you. I've updated the website now to include some things that help clarify some example use-cases. I hope it helps?

First and foremost: great job shipping it!

Regarding your question: I'd still love one (captivating) example, one 10s video to "pull me in" and convince me to install it. Looking forward to it.

Thanks!

I added some screenshots. They're more easily seen in the Github readme than on the website. (I really ought to change to a different Github-Pages theme.)

Thanks - it does help. So now I have a better understanding what it does - if I were to express my understanding in a single sentence, it would be something like "Mjolnir allows you to script Apple mouse events or system dialogs in Lua and assign them to a hotkey - no need to use Apple C API".

Again, if you target Mac power users (which is the right market you should probably target - much bigger than just developers), I would emphasize higher-level stuff you can do with Mjolnir and ease of use comparing to AppleScript.

For some inspiration, go to App Store and search for "Automator" - you'll see several bundles that help people automate programs like Adobe Illustrator, etc.

Just my 2 cents. Good luck!

Here is another idea/fun experiment: try to express your idea in:

- 5 words

- 1 sentence

- 1 paragraph

- 3 paragraphs

Adding constraints like that really help you focus on what's important. For example, does "Lightweight" section belong to the introduction, or is it an implementation detail? Should you move screenshots up on the page above the "fold line"? etc. etc.

Good points. I will work on improving the introduction of the landing page to explain this better.

To be honest, it's kind of hard to explain what Mjolnir can do, because really it's just a Lua environment. I wrote some Lua modules people can install that bridge over internal OS X APIs to do things like access windows and stuff. But really, the power lies in your imagination of what you want to automate, and Mjolnir just gives you the power to automate them.

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