My name is Rahul Sarathy and I posted TextFrame a few months ago on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29234636) as a tool to create animated technical papers. After gathering feedback from the community, I found that the best use case for my tool was for creating tutorials.
I am proud to share my next iteration as a tool to create animated product tutorials. Hopefully you can find use in it to create more engaging tutorials for onboarding and helping out your users.
This is great. I think something like this is very valuable to a small startup or indie hacker who has a product that requires a sign up before their users can see/use.
You know how a lot of SaaS has a video of the user story and what their app does and looks like on the landing page? Well, I think this can be way better, less time consuming, and way cheaper than hiring an animation studio to create that video. You can also edit the textframe as the product grows; something that is much harder to do for videos.
A few of small features can make this way better.
1. The ability to put the textframe in an iframe. So users can use it on their landing page.
2. The ability to auto play the steps. (it should stop autoplay if user clicks on a step to view)
3. More UI customizability so it goes with the landing page.
I see this being more valuable as a marketing tool than a tutorial tool, but I'm only one person. Good work and good luck =)
This is very cool. Nice job on this! I like how slick the UI feels when I'm scrolling up and down the tutorial steps.
One quick piece of feedback that I saw right away: Clicking on the next step on the left and then seeing the video update on the right is distracting, so I ended up not even reading the text on the left after a while.
Perhaps you could show "subway stops" on the left to indicate which step you are and how many there are in total, and then have the instruction text above or below the video? The way it works now, your eyes have to dart back and forth from left to right to read the text and then watch the video.
Agree -- the product is interesting but the marketing site design is rough/unfinished to the point where I wouldn't trust the service. I currently use Loom in a similar capacity and think there's a big market for this type of service. Congrats on the launch and good luck!
Hey, cool project! Congrats!
A few more comments that I believe could help improve it:
1.If you click on a box with a step on the left side of a tutorial, it should take you to that step. At least that is how I tried to use it initially. Right now, you can only control going forward/backward through scrolling the page.
2. In the landing page the "View Examples" and "View a Tutorial" buttons look off in Firefox (the text overflows).
It's really cool!
would be great a figma-like interface with dropdown, input field etc.. to better redesign the UI.
Otherwise a way to build a sketch of the UI using a screenshot.
Outofthebot|4 years ago
My name is Rahul Sarathy and I posted TextFrame a few months ago on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29234636) as a tool to create animated technical papers. After gathering feedback from the community, I found that the best use case for my tool was for creating tutorials.
I am proud to share my next iteration as a tool to create animated product tutorials. Hopefully you can find use in it to create more engaging tutorials for onboarding and helping out your users.
You can check out some examples I’ve created using the software: at https://textframe.app/examples
Please let me know what you think! You can also email me at rahul@textframe.app if you have any questions or just want to say hello
apurvak|4 years ago
eitland|4 years ago
One question, the orginal demo was amazing in itself, is that technology/source still available somewhere?
forgingahead|4 years ago
dot_michael|4 years ago
You know how a lot of SaaS has a video of the user story and what their app does and looks like on the landing page? Well, I think this can be way better, less time consuming, and way cheaper than hiring an animation studio to create that video. You can also edit the textframe as the product grows; something that is much harder to do for videos.
A few of small features can make this way better.
1. The ability to put the textframe in an iframe. So users can use it on their landing page.
2. The ability to auto play the steps. (it should stop autoplay if user clicks on a step to view)
3. More UI customizability so it goes with the landing page.
I see this being more valuable as a marketing tool than a tutorial tool, but I'm only one person. Good work and good luck =)
Outofthebot|4 years ago
When you say marketing tool, what sort of content do you have in mind?
Also, I do provide the ability to embed in your landing pages, the instructions are at the bottom of my landing page.
allenu|4 years ago
One quick piece of feedback that I saw right away: Clicking on the next step on the left and then seeing the video update on the right is distracting, so I ended up not even reading the text on the left after a while.
Perhaps you could show "subway stops" on the left to indicate which step you are and how many there are in total, and then have the instruction text above or below the video? The way it works now, your eyes have to dart back and forth from left to right to read the text and then watch the video.
Anyway, best of luck with this.
Marciplan|4 years ago
pirate787|4 years ago
cartucho1|4 years ago
1.If you click on a box with a step on the left side of a tutorial, it should take you to that step. At least that is how I tried to use it initially. Right now, you can only control going forward/backward through scrolling the page.
2. In the landing page the "View Examples" and "View a Tutorial" buttons look off in Firefox (the text overflows).
bag_boy|4 years ago
Outofthebot|4 years ago
codeonline|4 years ago
Outofthebot|4 years ago
gw67|4 years ago
Donckele|4 years ago
Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information).
How come?
Outofthebot|4 years ago
nowherebeen|4 years ago
arosier|4 years ago
clement12|4 years ago
[deleted]