[HN Gopher] Show HN: Monito, a browser extension for software te...
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Show HN: Monito, a browser extension for software testers
Author : bjarocki
Score : 54 points
Date : 2021-05-03 10:24 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (getmonito.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (getmonito.com)
| makarov wrote:
| Looks similar to https://birdeatsbug.com
| nxpnsv wrote:
| Can i see a report somewhere?
| bjarocki wrote:
| Sure,
| https://www.dropbox.com/s/zffejt4u2l5d3x1/logs-1620070042074...
|
| When you are extracting logs, it creates a single archive with
| all the items you selected. Usually, it'll be: 1. Combined logs
| - everything in a single file 2. Network logs 3. Console logs
| 4. User interactions 5. Navigation events
|
| One user already suggested it'd be nice to include generated
| HTML with more human-readable logs. I thought about having a
| web-based log reader, but this seems to be an even better idea.
| topazas wrote:
| Any open source alternatives?
| brysonreece wrote:
| Yeah, I would be interested in this as well. I'm not really up
| for paying $39 for a half finished landing page of info built
| using reworded Tailwind UI components.
| bjarocki wrote:
| I agree. The landing page isn't the nicest one. I'm not a
| designer, though, and I'd rather spend that time improving
| the product. Is there anything you'd like to see in the
| extension that'd convince you to pay for it? Happy to
| improve!
| brysonreece wrote:
| I totally understand the use of Tailwind UI for an easy way
| to achieve professional looking components; I use it every
| single day at my job.
|
| At the same time, you're targeting this product towards
| customers who are already developer-oriented -- a crowd
| that is familiar with, or can easily recognize, the same
| technologies you've used to build Monito. Tweaking the
| designs to have a more custom flair so it doesn't seem so
| copy and paste, avoiding the same icons for multiple
| figures, and especially lowering your price are all things
| that would probably help with early and continued adoption
| IMO.
|
| As for things you could include to justify the existing
| price, I really don't know. There's a heavy difference
| between paying for a desktop-application license vs a
| browser extension.
| [deleted]
| bjarocki wrote:
| Valid point. I started noticing Tailwind UI everywhere,
| and it starts to be a bit annoying indeed. Will def work
| on it.
|
| We'll see about the price. So far, it sells ok. I'd
| rather focus on improving the quality and adding useful
| features.
|
| Regarding the icons, I've just noticed and fixed that,
| thank you!
| jacekm wrote:
| > anything you'd like to see in the extension that'd
| convince you to pay for it?
|
| Different pricing scheme, at least in the beginning. While
| $39 (or even $59) is acceptable as one time payment, I am
| not sure if I am willing to pay this for a product that's
| been on the market for only 3 weeks and whose future is
| unknown. Charging something like $1-$2 per month will earn
| you more in the long term and will provide a safer option
| for the customers (they won't loose too much if you
| disappear in a couple of months).
|
| BTW, at the organization where I work, we can only make
| payments to established entities, i.e. someone who has
| address, account number and can issue an invoice. I guess
| Gumroad, as a middle party, can provide all of these, still
| it would add to your credibility if you had an "About" page
| with the necessary data. Oh and a Privacy Policy would be
| nice too - some organizations won't allow installing any
| extensions that are not reviewed by a security team and
| such reviews often involve checking privacy policies.
| bjarocki wrote:
| Good point about credibility. I'm going to improve the
| landing page with a proper about page. I'll also add a
| privacy policy. From the start, I wanted it to work 100%
| locally, so I don't have to worry about sensitive data.
| Now it only uses some ids needed for trials and licenses.
|
| About pricing, I don't think that model would be better.
| As a solo developer, it's better to charge more and
| provide better support to fewer customers. I'm not saying
| no, but it seems to be working well for now. Thank you
| for the suggestions!
| bendotero wrote:
| we developers are a stingy lot. I wouldn't base any pricing
| decision on what technical/developers say. The ultimate
| customer for this is a support person who is going to give
| feedback to a developer. To them and/or a QA team, you
| could be saving them a ton of time with this product.
| Consider that birdeatsbug starts at free for personal use
| and then $39/month. You might actually be leaving money on
| the table if you go $39 one time. Just something to
| consider.
| bjarocki wrote:
| At this point the price is 39$ because the product itself
| isn't polished yet. Now I can see it's actually needed
| and I'm going to add some nice features. Then it'll go up
| to ~59$ as it won't be an 'early access' anymore.
| nxpnsv wrote:
| I'm also not sure exactly what's being sold, but I don't get
| why tailwind is a problem?
| l-albertovich wrote:
| Disregard the style complaints, they make no sense. The tool
| seems super cool and I'd definitely give it a try if there was at
| least some sort of usage demo as it's not something that would
| let me do things I can't do already but something that would make
| it much more comfortable and to evaluate that I need to at least
| take a look at it.
| bjarocki wrote:
| Thank you! Regarding usage demo, do you mean something like
| video explaining what this tool can do and how is it better
| than existing solutions?
| suifbwish wrote:
| As a developer, why would I want to use a special browser than
| isn't mainstream for anything. It's just going to need retesting
| in the mainstream ones and I'm not sure what this offers that
| grease monkey and vanilla developer tools doesn't.
| jacekm wrote:
| May I suggest adding Jira integration?
| bjarocki wrote:
| It'd require storing user login data. For now, I'm not planning
| this, but we'll see what the future brings.
| dabinat wrote:
| This seems to be aimed at developers / testers but it might be
| useful for end-users too.
|
| If a customer reports a problem we can't reproduce, it would be
| handy to just direct them to a plugin they can download to
| generate a report.
|
| But the up-front pricing model doesn't work for that kind of
| scenario because customers wouldn't pay for it. It would be
| better to have the customer download it for free and enter a one-
| time code that allows them to use it under my subscription.
| bjarocki wrote:
| That's interesting. I'll add that to my to-do and think about
| possible solutions. Thank you!
| cyberge99 wrote:
| Is Firefox on the roadmap?
|
| Would the Brave add-on work in Firefox?
| bjarocki wrote:
| Now I know people are interested in this so I'll be looking
| into adding more browsers support. I _think_ Firefox is doable.
| Safari most probably not (nobody cares probably, but still).
| atonse wrote:
| This looks awesome. Is the underlying recorded data available in
| an easy to parse format like JSON?
|
| Would be quite powerful to do 90% of the work of transforming
| that recording to a puppeteer script to add to one's test suite.
|
| Speaking of which, what is the state of the art right now for
| browser automation scripts?
| bjarocki wrote:
| Thank you! And yes, it's all JSON. It's not super easy to read
| when you get all the data this way, though. I'm planning to add
| a web-based log reader to parse the logs and display them in
| the same way it's done in the extension.
|
| Also, generating Cypress/Puppeteer/Playwright tests is on my
| to-do list. It should be fairly easy because all the data,
| including selectors, is already there. I wrote more about my
| plans here: https://jarocki.me/blog/monito
|
| Regarding state of the art for browser automation scripts, I
| think the most popular tools are Cypress and Puppeteer. I'd
| like to get some feedback from QA folks, though.
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(page generated 2021-05-03 23:02 UTC)