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Show HN: Monito, a browser extension for software testers

62 points by bjarocki 5y ago

atonse 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 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.
  - Xen0byte 5y ago
    Hi, just to chip in because I read your request for feedback and also because I'm interested in seeing what Monito can do. I’ve been heading QA depts at large tech companies for a while now, and part of my job is to be up to speed with the latest tools and trends, and to write automation tools for various tech stack layers. To answer your question, my preferred front-end tool at the moment is Playwright (via C# binding). Playwright is the new kid on the block, but it has great potential; I’ve migrated all of our Selenium tests to it and I couldn’t be happier.
    - bjarocki 5y ago
      That's good to know, thank you! Is there anything I can do to make Monito worth adding to your toolset? Have you tried it? Thanks!
topazas 5y ago
Any open source alternatives?
- brysonreece 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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.
      - bjarocki 5y ago
        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!
makarov 5y ago
Looks similar to https://birdeatsbug.com https://birdeatsbug.com
cyberge99 5y ago
Is Firefox on the roadmap? Would the Brave add-on work in Firefox?
- bjarocki 5y ago
  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).
l-albertovich 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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?
jacekm 5y ago
May I suggest adding Jira integration?
- bjarocki 5y ago
  It'd require storing user login data. For now, I'm not planning this, but we'll see what the future brings.
dabinat 5y ago
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 5y ago
  That's interesting. I'll add that to my to-do and think about possible solutions. Thank you!
- mdaniel 5y ago
  FWIW, that scenario is closer to the problem Sentry is trying to solve, and their feedback capture mechanism allows the end user to contribute anything relevant, or even just rant!, which can be helpful beyond just the raw data of an error capture I do recognize that this tool seems like it's oriented toward logic bugs whereas Sentry really shines in the unforseen outcomes case, but I'd bet a well placed "send feedback" link could still capture the browser details and breadcrumbs without requiring a formal error per se
nxpnsv 5y ago
Can i see a report somewhere?
- bjarocki 5y ago
  Sure, https://www.dropbox.com/s/zffejt4u2l5d3x1/logs-1620070042074.zip?dl=0 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.
  - nxpnsv 5y ago
    Thanks, this is interesting. Yes, a pretty report would def help getting more users.
    - bjarocki 5y ago
      I'm working on this as we speak.
suifbwish 5y ago
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.

62 points by bjarocki 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 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.
- Xen0byte 5y ago
  Hi, just to chip in because I read your request for feedback and also because I'm interested in seeing what Monito can do. I’ve been heading QA depts at large tech companies for a while now, and part of my job is to be up to speed with the latest tools and trends, and to write automation tools for various tech stack layers. To answer your question, my preferred front-end tool at the moment is Playwright (via C# binding). Playwright is the new kid on the block, but it has great potential; I’ve migrated all of our Selenium tests to it and I couldn’t be happier.
  - bjarocki 5y ago
    That's good to know, thank you! Is there anything I can do to make Monito worth adding to your toolset? Have you tried it? Thanks!

topazas 5y ago

Any open source alternatives?

brysonreece 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
    - bjarocki 5y ago
      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!

makarov 5y ago

Looks similar to https://birdeatsbug.com https://birdeatsbug.com

cyberge99 5y ago

Is Firefox on the roadmap? Would the Brave add-on work in Firefox?

bjarocki 5y ago
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).

l-albertovich 5y ago

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 5y ago
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?

jacekm 5y ago

May I suggest adding Jira integration?

bjarocki 5y ago
It'd require storing user login data. For now, I'm not planning this, but we'll see what the future brings.

dabinat 5y ago

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 5y ago
That's interesting. I'll add that to my to-do and think about possible solutions. Thank you!
mdaniel 5y ago
FWIW, that scenario is closer to the problem Sentry is trying to solve, and their feedback capture mechanism allows the end user to contribute anything relevant, or even just rant!, which can be helpful beyond just the raw data of an error capture I do recognize that this tool seems like it's oriented toward logic bugs whereas Sentry really shines in the unforseen outcomes case, but I'd bet a well placed "send feedback" link could still capture the browser details and breadcrumbs without requiring a formal error per se

nxpnsv 5y ago

Can i see a report somewhere?

bjarocki 5y ago
Sure, https://www.dropbox.com/s/zffejt4u2l5d3x1/logs-1620070042074.zip?dl=0 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.
- nxpnsv 5y ago
  Thanks, this is interesting. Yes, a pretty report would def help getting more users.
  - bjarocki 5y ago
    I'm working on this as we speak.

suifbwish 5y ago

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.