This is a good article but unfortunately there's evidence of voting collusion and, worse, booster comments in the thread. We ban accounts and sites that do these things, so please make sure not to do them. It's not in your interest anyhow, since if the article gets attention, HN readers are good at sniffing out the collusion and then they go mad with ire.
Love this. Totes getting bored using a gazillion tools to help onboard my users. Before you've even started a new venture, you'll find yourself hunting for the right tool for a job you didn't even expect would exist.<p>Which support tool. Which analytics tool. Which AB testing tool. Which wizard tool. bla bla bla.<p>Back to basics. I'll get my coding hat on and actually make an effort. Nice work. Will try this one myself next time I need a wizard.
I'm interested to hear what the opinion on jQuery are like these days. Even if it's a little unglamorous, this is the perfect use case - a one-off project where you have needs for cross-browser animation, resizing, DOM manip, and where something like React might be overkill, even if feasible. CSS animations might be an alternative but it depends on audience browser breakdown.
Nice – what a simple, elegant solution. Like the others are saying, sometimes there's no need to reach for the heavy toolbox...<p>How did you measure the effectiveness of having the walkthrough on the front-page? Did you (or did you think about) hooking this up to some analytics? Perhaps see where people tend to drop-off?
Very interesting. I think it's nice to see an account of building something from scratch instead of using a library. Sometimes I spend more time searching for a suitable library than it would take to build it from scratch :D
Thanks for your generosity in sharing this, I can see this being incredibly useful for creating user onboarding, walkthroughs and demos. The timing of this is perfect for me - thanks again!
Looks very elegant! Great it does not require loading the app itself and is easily embeddable in a web page.
Calling the implementation a "vanilla" jQuery made me smile )
This is really cool! I've been looking for something like this to give an app walkthrough without needing test data or a demo environment -- thanks guys!
Loads have commented rightly on the simplicity (nay elegance) of the solution. I can't fault the use of JQuery even if I have never been a fan. I also agree that sometimes just building something as opposed to searching for someone else's solution is the right choice. Especially when you look at some of the foolish 'kata' time people spend when they could practice on something business-useful like this.<p>Most of all, to see the thought process played out is really important. This article would make great reading for juniors to help see how more experienced people solve problems. Particularly as it is not a patronising 'tutorial' (draw three circles, then draw an owl) but working through a clear scenario.