8 ms·

Show HN: Stop asking your clients "What browser are you on?"

93 points by jonasvp 14y ago

jonasvp 14y ago
We semi-launched with a comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4499937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4499937 Just finished the Pro version and launched for real, would love some feedback from HN!
deanclatworthy 14y ago
I have found this to be useful: http://supportdetails.com/ http://supportdetails.com/ What benefit does your service have over this one? Furthermore, if I send mycompany.browser-details.com links to two people, how does your system identify who clicked on the link?
- jonasvp 14y ago
  Definitely, support-details.com was the inspiration. However, we didn't want to send our clients to some other site - we needed a branded version. As for identifying users: you can add multiple recipients in case there are several people in your organisation using it. We figure that you'll mostly have your client on the phone or are sending an email and expect an answer within minutes - so you know who it was. In the future, we might add a "Subject" line.
  - dubcanada 14y ago
    That's assuming it's a single client on the phone at a single time. Which is wrong. There could be multiple clients on the phone or multiple phone calls with multiple clients.
    - jonasvp 14y ago
      Right, that's when the "multiple recipients" come into play. You alone probably won't be on the phone with multiple clients.
      - dubcanada 14y ago
        That's confusing? Okay billy you send your results to cindy and bob sends his to chad and ashley sends hers to alex and anyone else send theirs to the next person on the list? lol? What's wrong with domain.browserdetails.com/somerandomidhere It allows you to reference it without going into an email. Allows anyone to view it (rather then forwarding the email to 15 different people) and makes it easy to transfer. I fail to see the reason why email would be better in any sense. It doesn't allow for the same control as one would require for such a service. You also can't organize it as it doesn't come from "client" so if you are looking for it down the road you generally search "Client Name" and it would never turn on.
  - Rocky_Outcrop 14y ago
    Needed a branded version? This is when you're talking to clients that can't tell the difference between one browser and another? These clients can't tell the difference between a big blue e, a fox or a colourful circle? Yet you needed a branded version? I'm just pulling your leg, I understand that you needed a branded version and that wasn't influenced by your clients inability to distinguish between core brands in the online space.
- mikerastiello 14y ago
  My company used this as a model when we built our own solution. I think between our designer and developer we had it designed and built out in 2 or 3 days. Ours also supports file uploads. Once the email is submitted it goes right into our support queue.
ra 14y ago
I think it's a GREAT idea. Now, this might just be me, and I don't want to sound negative, or take anything away from the effort you've obviously put into making this really good, but ... For $120 / year I think, hmm I could probably build something that does this (just for me) in an hour, and it'd be fun! However at $10 per YEAR, I would think it's a steal and jump at it. Not suggesting you should drop your pants on price, but that's my view on it. I think charging for a CNAME is a good strategy.
- dubcanada 14y ago
  I have to agree, at $120 a year I could build it. I don't think you'll be able to charge more then $10 a year.
- venus 14y ago
  You've got to be kidding me. $10 a year may as well be nothing. I wouldn't do anything for anybody for $10/year. I probably couldn't even be bothered invoicing you. You're right that it's a very simple product, though. $5 a month with a 20% discount for $50/yr sounds fair to me. I like it though. Your textbook well executed MVP. The price might need some tweaks but hey, it's a product. Well done Jonas.
  - jschuur 14y ago
    The point isn't if it's worth it to the developer to charge you that much. It's an automated billing process. The point is that the price point is low enough that people won't think twice about paying it. In this case, more than 5 times as many as would go for $50/year.
  - jonasvp 14y ago
    Thanks for the kind words! The pricing is obviously geared towards agencies, not freelancers. We'll see how it pans out, your feedback is greatly appreciated!
  - martinced 14y ago
    "You've got to be kidding me. $10 a year may as well be nothing. I wouldn't do anything for anybody for $10/year." That makes no sense in the context of selling 0's and 1's where the marginal cost is close to zero. What you should ask yourself is this: would you rather sell one hundred subscription at $120 per year or ten thousands subscription at $10 per year? I'm not saying these are the numbers that GP would have but you must take this into account. Another way to put it: quite some people are very happy sitting on hundreds of thousands --if not millions-- of dollars selling games on the iPhone at less than $5 a pop. Another comparison point: there are desktop apps way more complex than the webapp we're talking about here that can bought (not a subscription, but bought) when there are bundle sales at way less than $10. Once again, the problem is trivial: would you rather make zero sales to that target demographic (people buying apps bundles) or would you rather sell a few thousands license for you app at, say, $5? Basically the two concepts that you don't understand are: a) economy of scale and b) it's all 0's and 1's. "I probably couldn't even be bothered invoicing you." That just shows how lame and inefficient your invoice and tax filling process is. (btw I can help: no latter than yesterday when the tools of the trade were posted here there were apps taking care of automated invoicing and tax fillings)
rartichoke 14y ago
If I'm on the phone with a client and ask them to look at something I can generally figure out what browser they have (minus the version) by asking 1 or 2 questions and that's often good enough. Now... if you used this data in a way to automate some typical developer->client BS then I could see paying for it maybe. For example, let's say you load up a few VMs with every major browser / browser+version combo. Then you can tell a client to goto some url, maybe it could be something like: http://browser.somedomain.com?for=somepage.com/preview http://browser.somedomain.com?for=somepage.com/preview If the client goes to that address it captures his browser details just like your site does but then: 1. Replicates his settings with one of the VM browsers. 2. Takes a screenshot of what somepage.com/preview looks like. 3. Sends the screenshot and data to my e-mail or have an API letting me get that data back in on my end. That has pretty high value because when a client says "the border looks weird!" that means nothing to me. I have to see the problem to be able to fix it and people who aren't technical are horrible at explaining technical problems.
- jonasvp 14y ago
  I've noticed that screenshots (a la https://browsershots.org/ https://browsershots.org/) don't really help either as there's no way to debug - you'd change something and need another screenshot to see what happened. I guess we'll have to integrate http://browserstack.com http://browserstack.com (which is an incredible service).
- thejosh 14y ago
  If you are doing that much to just see one simple page, might as well try something like browsershots.
  - rartichoke 14y ago
    I could but I would still have to send the client to some url to get his browser data so I know what to look up. If I'm sending a client a url, why not take it 1 step further and eliminate any work on my end by just providing me the correct screenshot and info? Then I can shoot a client an e-mail, ask him to click a link and seconds later I'm looking at what he's looking at with his browser settings without having to do anything.
dubcanada 14y ago
Google Chrome on a Mac reports the following... PDF: No - wrong Chrome has a built in PDF reader JAVA: No - wrong I do have java OGG-VIDEO: Probably supported - lol? probably H.264-VIDEO: Probably supported - ^ WEBM-VIDEO: Probably supported - ^ And not to be a party pooper but why do I need to signup? Why can't I just click "Get Browser Details" get a unique hyperlink that I could then send to someone. What if I have mulitple clients? I have no way of saying, okay Joe is using IE8, and Sandra is using IE9. What if my client is using IE6. Bootstrap doesn't support IE6. I think thats it for now.
- lucaspiller 14y ago
  Actually Java is right. You can no longer run Java applets in Chrome on Mac as Java 7 isn't compatible with it. http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2429779 http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...
  - dubcanada 14y ago
    Hrm java applets load for me... Maybe I need to investigate more lol.
- madmaze 14y ago
  Similar results on Chrome Linux
- phoboslab 14y ago
  The "probably" comes directly from the HTML5 Media spec. Browsers can't say for sure that they support a certain video format. media.canPlayType(type) - Returns the empty string (a negative response), "maybe", or "probably" based on how confident the user agent is that it can play media resources of the given type. ~ http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/the-video-element.html#dom-navigator-canplaytype http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/...
- Jacqued 14y ago
  Not on chrome but I get the wrong browser too I'm on IE 8 (yeah, big corp...) and the report states I am using IE 7.
mootothemax 14y ago
You need to add support for custom domains so that I can tell people to visit blah.mydomain.com by setting a CNAME record in DNS. This is especially important given that your domain name is less than ideal at present for support purposes; I've had enough of reading out hyphenated domains over the phone, and will avoid services that involve doing so. Looks good though! Do you remember previous visits to the page as well?
- jonasvp 14y ago
  Thanks! CNAMEs are supported in the Pro version you can upgrade to. Previous visits are remembered, you can access all the data from your control panel or click the permalink in the e-mail you receive on new visits.
  - taf2 14y ago
    how do you handle SSL with CNAMEs? I'd like to offer CNAMEs for my customers as well, but the lack of SSL support means I don't for security. Suggestions?
    - jonasvp 14y ago
      Tricky one. I don't think there's any way to solve that, other than creating certificates for every CNAME - which is too expensive and complicated for your clients. I've run into this with Campaign Monitor and they simply don't do SSL for CNAMEs. Since they do everything else perfectly, I'm assuming there's no way to solve this problem.
      - raverbashing 14y ago
        It's really a major deficiency on how things work together (SSL, HTTP, CNAMEs) Maybe the solution is having stuff.blah.com redirect to blah.com/stuff and do SSL from there Ugly, but it gets the job done.
      - professorTuring 14y ago
        You can solve this problem by using a "wildcard certificate". It's like 300$ more expensive than a normal one. You can test how it works creating your own: http://www.justinsamuel.com/2006/03/11/howto-create-a-self-signed-wildcard-ssl-certificate/ http://www.justinsamuel.com/2006/03/11/howto-create-a-self-s...
churreiro 14y ago
Why not just a JS API for this? I just cannot see the full application for this app. It is interesting but the work required to get that info by using JS and just plot it is not that high. Just my 2cents
- Rocky_Outcrop 14y ago
  You could also request the http info and simply show that to a person on a page. In rails it would be as simple as calling 'request.user_agent' and printing that value on screen.
btipling 14y ago
We use graylog for logging plus a client side logging script, and that gives us a lot of information. User id + agent + plus time they loaded the the site + any client errors they got.
MatthewPhillips 14y ago
What would make this really worthwhile, is if along with the browser details you included common/known bugs and quirks for the given browser version.
taf2 14y ago
The problem this doesn't solve is the customer who emails support, includes a screenshot. The screenshot doesn't include the browser frame, but just clearly shows something being rendered incorrectly. You kind of are stuck - first trying to reproduce locally, and then you have to resort to asking "what browser are you on?"... Anyone have other ideas about how to handle the email support when it's like this?
- prawks 14y ago
  At the risk of making your service/site appear error-prone, you could make it evident on each page what a user should do if there is a problem. Basically have a method for the user to send an email to support with what is equivalent to a stack trace for that page: include their browser info, and any other relevant generic info. Just spit-balling here.
- MattBearman 14y ago
  Hate to thread-jack, but that's exactly the use case I built BugMuncher (http://bugmuncher.com http://bugmuncher.com) for :)
- martinced 14y ago
  "Anyone have other ideas about how to handle the email support when it's like this?" Basically all you need is a user ID + time or a session ID so that you can trivially (in one line) cat your log and grep the corresponding ID (you have to log the browser details once per session of course, which is trivial to do). Note that I've been working on a project where the helpdesk would mandate user to take screenshots or their complaints wouldn't be going through, so I know what you're talking about ; ) Want an easy solution? Put the session ID somewhere in your screenshot that shall resist lossy compression (my users where forced to send PNG screenshots but YMMV: you may be getting JPG ones) but that is not readable by your users. Something like a #CCCCCC text on a #FFFFFF background next to the logo at the top of the page. Now I'm not advocating everybody to do that: all I'm saying is that if, in your case, you're getting enough screenshots without being able to tie them to a session ID, then it's an easy solution that may save your day.
HyprMusic 14y ago
Would be great if it also took note of the DPI so retina-style devices could be detected.
jakub_g 14y ago
In my Firefox @ WinXP it displays Java 10 :) I guess it's an issue with the values reported by the browser (about:config lists Java plugin with 10.13.2.20). Chrome and Opera correctly say Java 7. Also, the Flash version could be more detailed. http://supportdetails.com/ http://supportdetails.com/ lists precise version. Flash 11.2 vs 11.6 might make a difference. The more details, the better.
buremba 14y ago
please stop creating projects for this issue. there are already tons of them.
meaty 14y ago
We wrote our own version of this which took about 2 minutes to write. 1. Client hits /support/client-info which generates a specific system error with a unique ID (right 6 digits of a GUID) and pumps browser, error and user context information via log4net into our logging system. Client tells us the error ID. 2. Open monitoring system, type error ID in. It's all there. Not only that, we use it for error monitoring too.
- davidw 14y ago
  Seems kind of awkward. Thinking about it offhand using some Rails terminology, let's see. * Naive version: save user information after every request via after_filter or some other hook. Probably slow for sites that get a lot of traffic. * Slightly less naive version: check to see if current_user.browser_info has changed compared to the current request in an after_filter or other hook. If so, save it in the DB. This way you can not only check what they're using right now, but what they were doing yesterday when they did something that caused your site to go haywire. * I'm sure the above can be improved on: it'd be nice to package it up as a gem. This is not rocket science. Looking in the logs is easy enough, but it's data that should be very easily available to support people, and they probably should not have ssh access to the server...
  - mgkimsal 14y ago
    " save user information after every request via after_filter or some other hook. Probably slow for sites that get a lot of traffic." Probably really wouldn't be that slow, unless done really naively - much of that information is already being written to a web server logfile in most cases, and that doesn't slow things down too much. Send the info to a separate logging server/db. If you're getting a lot of traffic, you're possibly doing a lot of queries anyway - one more is incrementally painful, but shouldn't be a killer.
  - meaty 14y ago
    That's naive and inefficient. We only care if there is a system error, if the user phones up or they fill in the online support form. This is only to satisfy the path of the phone call. Everything else is passed around with context. For the phone call, our logging system has a web interface (log4net appender -> postgres -> asp.net web forms page). you just visit a web page and copy and type the error ID in and you get everything from the entire context, session and client info to the stack dump.
nodata 14y ago
Unless your client's problem is "I can't log in", why not just look in your log to see which browser they are on?
- mileszs 14y ago
  It's actually a lot easier, unless you have next-to-zero traffic, to ask _them_ to take an action that puts the info in your inbox, rather than dig in logs, which could have that specific user's information buried amongst hundreds of other entries. It's a time-saver. What if you have insufficient logging (Heroku sans a decent logging plugin, for instance)? What if you built the thing, but it's hosted by a third-party that limits log access? What if you want some non-technical or not-that-technical person to handle the issue? As hackers, we tend toward "do-it-yourself", but there are a lot of cases where that isn't practical or economical.
  - nodata 14y ago
    If you can't quickly identify your client in your logs you will have bigger problems.
    - Argorak 14y ago
      Sure, but the usual support rep has no log access. But using a good knowledge base, he can answer things like "Flash 9 doesn't work" without tech assistance.
      - nodata 14y ago
        Why doesn't the tech support rep have access to the information he needs? The data is in the organisation.
        Argorak 14y ago
        Because he might not be qualified to read it and providing an aggregation of said data in a consumable form is too much implementation work? In some organizations, he is not even allowed to read operational data without pre-screening.
rplnt 14y ago
It detects that I have a Flash plugin. While this is correct, I have plugin on demand enabled, so it is not available until I either play it or whitelist it. Tested with Opera and Chrome. (Firefox supports it as well.) Could lead to some confusion.
adandy 14y ago
It reports Windows Phone 8 as Windows 8.
jonaldomo 14y ago
@jonasvp: I would be extermely interested in reading about how many people signed up for the service if you would be willing to share. As well as any other one service products you guys sell.
ComputerGuru 14y ago
One of these gets posted on HN every month. I'm sorry, but I don't get the big deal. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4499435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4499435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3526446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3526446 and more.
- thirit 14y ago
  And this product was already posted in one of those threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4499937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4499937
kvirani 14y ago
The Authentication forms should ideally submit to HTTPS, but it looks like you haven't setup SSL, but should.
deepGem 14y ago
https://aboutmybrowser.com/ https://aboutmybrowser.com/ does the same without any signups
- dubcanada 14y ago
  Oh look this one has a unique url.
prince_hakeem 14y ago
feature not a product
Kerrick 14y ago
I've always been a fan of this one: http://supportdetails.com http://supportdetails.com But, yours supports a few more details.

93 points by jonasvp 14y ago

We semi-launched with a comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4499937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4499937 Just finished the Pro version and launched for real, would love some feedback from HN!

deanclatworthy 14y ago

I have found this to be useful: http://supportdetails.com/ http://supportdetails.com/ What benefit does your service have over this one? Furthermore, if I send mycompany.browser-details.com links to two people, how does your system identify who clicked on the link?

jonasvp 14y ago
Definitely, support-details.com was the inspiration. However, we didn't want to send our clients to some other site - we needed a branded version. As for identifying users: you can add multiple recipients in case there are several people in your organisation using it. We figure that you'll mostly have your client on the phone or are sending an email and expect an answer within minutes - so you know who it was. In the future, we might add a "Subject" line.
- dubcanada 14y ago
  That's assuming it's a single client on the phone at a single time. Which is wrong. There could be multiple clients on the phone or multiple phone calls with multiple clients.
  - jonasvp 14y ago
    Right, that's when the "multiple recipients" come into play. You alone probably won't be on the phone with multiple clients.
    - dubcanada 14y ago
      That's confusing? Okay billy you send your results to cindy and bob sends his to chad and ashley sends hers to alex and anyone else send theirs to the next person on the list? lol? What's wrong with domain.browserdetails.com/somerandomidhere It allows you to reference it without going into an email. Allows anyone to view it (rather then forwarding the email to 15 different people) and makes it easy to transfer. I fail to see the reason why email would be better in any sense. It doesn't allow for the same control as one would require for such a service. You also can't organize it as it doesn't come from "client" so if you are looking for it down the road you generally search "Client Name" and it would never turn on.
- Rocky_Outcrop 14y ago
  Needed a branded version? This is when you're talking to clients that can't tell the difference between one browser and another? These clients can't tell the difference between a big blue e, a fox or a colourful circle? Yet you needed a branded version? I'm just pulling your leg, I understand that you needed a branded version and that wasn't influenced by your clients inability to distinguish between core brands in the online space.
mikerastiello 14y ago
My company used this as a model when we built our own solution. I think between our designer and developer we had it designed and built out in 2 or 3 days. Ours also supports file uploads. Once the email is submitted it goes right into our support queue.

ra 14y ago

I think it's a GREAT idea. Now, this might just be me, and I don't want to sound negative, or take anything away from the effort you've obviously put into making this really good, but ... For $120 / year I think, hmm I could probably build something that does this (just for me) in an hour, and it'd be fun! However at $10 per YEAR, I would think it's a steal and jump at it. Not suggesting you should drop your pants on price, but that's my view on it. I think charging for a CNAME is a good strategy.

dubcanada 14y ago
I have to agree, at $120 a year I could build it. I don't think you'll be able to charge more then $10 a year.
venus 14y ago
You've got to be kidding me. $10 a year may as well be nothing. I wouldn't do anything for anybody for $10/year. I probably couldn't even be bothered invoicing you. You're right that it's a very simple product, though. $5 a month with a 20% discount for $50/yr sounds fair to me. I like it though. Your textbook well executed MVP. The price might need some tweaks but hey, it's a product. Well done Jonas.
- jschuur 14y ago
  The point isn't if it's worth it to the developer to charge you that much. It's an automated billing process. The point is that the price point is low enough that people won't think twice about paying it. In this case, more than 5 times as many as would go for $50/year.
- jonasvp 14y ago
  Thanks for the kind words! The pricing is obviously geared towards agencies, not freelancers. We'll see how it pans out, your feedback is greatly appreciated!
- martinced 14y ago
  "You've got to be kidding me. $10 a year may as well be nothing. I wouldn't do anything for anybody for $10/year." That makes no sense in the context of selling 0's and 1's where the marginal cost is close to zero. What you should ask yourself is this: would you rather sell one hundred subscription at $120 per year or ten thousands subscription at $10 per year? I'm not saying these are the numbers that GP would have but you must take this into account. Another way to put it: quite some people are very happy sitting on hundreds of thousands --if not millions-- of dollars selling games on the iPhone at less than $5 a pop. Another comparison point: there are desktop apps way more complex than the webapp we're talking about here that can bought (not a subscription, but bought) when there are bundle sales at way less than $10. Once again, the problem is trivial: would you rather make zero sales to that target demographic (people buying apps bundles) or would you rather sell a few thousands license for you app at, say, $5? Basically the two concepts that you don't understand are: a) economy of scale and b) it's all 0's and 1's. "I probably couldn't even be bothered invoicing you." That just shows how lame and inefficient your invoice and tax filling process is. (btw I can help: no latter than yesterday when the tools of the trade were posted here there were apps taking care of automated invoicing and tax fillings)

rartichoke 14y ago

If I'm on the phone with a client and ask them to look at something I can generally figure out what browser they have (minus the version) by asking 1 or 2 questions and that's often good enough. Now... if you used this data in a way to automate some typical developer->client BS then I could see paying for it maybe. For example, let's say you load up a few VMs with every major browser / browser+version combo. Then you can tell a client to goto some url, maybe it could be something like: http://browser.somedomain.com?for=somepage.com/preview http://browser.somedomain.com?for=somepage.com/preview If the client goes to that address it captures his browser details just like your site does but then: 1. Replicates his settings with one of the VM browsers. 2. Takes a screenshot of what somepage.com/preview looks like. 3. Sends the screenshot and data to my e-mail or have an API letting me get that data back in on my end. That has pretty high value because when a client says "the border looks weird!" that means nothing to me. I have to see the problem to be able to fix it and people who aren't technical are horrible at explaining technical problems.

jonasvp 14y ago
I've noticed that screenshots (a la https://browsershots.org/ https://browsershots.org/) don't really help either as there's no way to debug - you'd change something and need another screenshot to see what happened. I guess we'll have to integrate http://browserstack.com http://browserstack.com (which is an incredible service).
thejosh 14y ago
If you are doing that much to just see one simple page, might as well try something like browsershots.
- rartichoke 14y ago
  I could but I would still have to send the client to some url to get his browser data so I know what to look up. If I'm sending a client a url, why not take it 1 step further and eliminate any work on my end by just providing me the correct screenshot and info? Then I can shoot a client an e-mail, ask him to click a link and seconds later I'm looking at what he's looking at with his browser settings without having to do anything.

dubcanada 14y ago

Google Chrome on a Mac reports the following... PDF: No - wrong Chrome has a built in PDF reader JAVA: No - wrong I do have java OGG-VIDEO: Probably supported - lol? probably H.264-VIDEO: Probably supported - ^ WEBM-VIDEO: Probably supported - ^ And not to be a party pooper but why do I need to signup? Why can't I just click "Get Browser Details" get a unique hyperlink that I could then send to someone. What if I have mulitple clients? I have no way of saying, okay Joe is using IE8, and Sandra is using IE9. What if my client is using IE6. Bootstrap doesn't support IE6. I think thats it for now.

lucaspiller 14y ago
Actually Java is right. You can no longer run Java applets in Chrome on Mac as Java 7 isn't compatible with it. http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2429779 http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...
- dubcanada 14y ago
  Hrm java applets load for me... Maybe I need to investigate more lol.
madmaze 14y ago
Similar results on Chrome Linux
phoboslab 14y ago
The "probably" comes directly from the HTML5 Media spec. Browsers can't say for sure that they support a certain video format. media.canPlayType(type) - Returns the empty string (a negative response), "maybe", or "probably" based on how confident the user agent is that it can play media resources of the given type. ~ http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/the-video-element.html#dom-navigator-canplaytype http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/...
Jacqued 14y ago
Not on chrome but I get the wrong browser too I'm on IE 8 (yeah, big corp...) and the report states I am using IE 7.

mootothemax 14y ago

You need to add support for custom domains so that I can tell people to visit blah.mydomain.com by setting a CNAME record in DNS. This is especially important given that your domain name is less than ideal at present for support purposes; I've had enough of reading out hyphenated domains over the phone, and will avoid services that involve doing so. Looks good though! Do you remember previous visits to the page as well?

jonasvp 14y ago
Thanks! CNAMEs are supported in the Pro version you can upgrade to. Previous visits are remembered, you can access all the data from your control panel or click the permalink in the e-mail you receive on new visits.
- taf2 14y ago
  how do you handle SSL with CNAMEs? I'd like to offer CNAMEs for my customers as well, but the lack of SSL support means I don't for security. Suggestions?
  - jonasvp 14y ago
    Tricky one. I don't think there's any way to solve that, other than creating certificates for every CNAME - which is too expensive and complicated for your clients. I've run into this with Campaign Monitor and they simply don't do SSL for CNAMEs. Since they do everything else perfectly, I'm assuming there's no way to solve this problem.
    - raverbashing 14y ago
      It's really a major deficiency on how things work together (SSL, HTTP, CNAMEs) Maybe the solution is having stuff.blah.com redirect to blah.com/stuff and do SSL from there Ugly, but it gets the job done.
    - professorTuring 14y ago
      You can solve this problem by using a "wildcard certificate". It's like 300$ more expensive than a normal one. You can test how it works creating your own: http://www.justinsamuel.com/2006/03/11/howto-create-a-self-signed-wildcard-ssl-certificate/ http://www.justinsamuel.com/2006/03/11/howto-create-a-self-s...

churreiro 14y ago

Why not just a JS API for this? I just cannot see the full application for this app. It is interesting but the work required to get that info by using JS and just plot it is not that high. Just my 2cents

Rocky_Outcrop 14y ago
You could also request the http info and simply show that to a person on a page. In rails it would be as simple as calling 'request.user_agent' and printing that value on screen.

btipling 14y ago

We use graylog for logging plus a client side logging script, and that gives us a lot of information. User id + agent + plus time they loaded the the site + any client errors they got.

MatthewPhillips 14y ago

What would make this really worthwhile, is if along with the browser details you included common/known bugs and quirks for the given browser version.

taf2 14y ago

The problem this doesn't solve is the customer who emails support, includes a screenshot. The screenshot doesn't include the browser frame, but just clearly shows something being rendered incorrectly. You kind of are stuck - first trying to reproduce locally, and then you have to resort to asking "what browser are you on?"... Anyone have other ideas about how to handle the email support when it's like this?

prawks 14y ago
At the risk of making your service/site appear error-prone, you could make it evident on each page what a user should do if there is a problem. Basically have a method for the user to send an email to support with what is equivalent to a stack trace for that page: include their browser info, and any other relevant generic info. Just spit-balling here.
MattBearman 14y ago
Hate to thread-jack, but that's exactly the use case I built BugMuncher (http://bugmuncher.com http://bugmuncher.com) for :)
martinced 14y ago
"Anyone have other ideas about how to handle the email support when it's like this?" Basically all you need is a user ID + time or a session ID so that you can trivially (in one line) cat your log and grep the corresponding ID (you have to log the browser details once per session of course, which is trivial to do). Note that I've been working on a project where the helpdesk would mandate user to take screenshots or their complaints wouldn't be going through, so I know what you're talking about ; ) Want an easy solution? Put the session ID somewhere in your screenshot that shall resist lossy compression (my users where forced to send PNG screenshots but YMMV: you may be getting JPG ones) but that is not readable by your users. Something like a #CCCCCC text on a #FFFFFF background next to the logo at the top of the page. Now I'm not advocating everybody to do that: all I'm saying is that if, in your case, you're getting enough screenshots without being able to tie them to a session ID, then it's an easy solution that may save your day.

HyprMusic 14y ago

Would be great if it also took note of the DPI so retina-style devices could be detected.

jakub_g 14y ago

In my Firefox @ WinXP it displays Java 10 :) I guess it's an issue with the values reported by the browser (about:config lists Java plugin with 10.13.2.20). Chrome and Opera correctly say Java 7. Also, the Flash version could be more detailed. http://supportdetails.com/ http://supportdetails.com/ lists precise version. Flash 11.2 vs 11.6 might make a difference. The more details, the better.

buremba 14y ago

please stop creating projects for this issue. there are already tons of them.

meaty 14y ago

We wrote our own version of this which took about 2 minutes to write. 1. Client hits /support/client-info which generates a specific system error with a unique ID (right 6 digits of a GUID) and pumps browser, error and user context information via log4net into our logging system. Client tells us the error ID. 2. Open monitoring system, type error ID in. It's all there. Not only that, we use it for error monitoring too.

davidw 14y ago
Seems kind of awkward. Thinking about it offhand using some Rails terminology, let's see. * Naive version: save user information after every request via after_filter or some other hook. Probably slow for sites that get a lot of traffic. * Slightly less naive version: check to see if current_user.browser_info has changed compared to the current request in an after_filter or other hook. If so, save it in the DB. This way you can not only check what they're using right now, but what they were doing yesterday when they did something that caused your site to go haywire. * I'm sure the above can be improved on: it'd be nice to package it up as a gem. This is not rocket science. Looking in the logs is easy enough, but it's data that should be very easily available to support people, and they probably should not have ssh access to the server...
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  " save user information after every request via after_filter or some other hook. Probably slow for sites that get a lot of traffic." Probably really wouldn't be that slow, unless done really naively - much of that information is already being written to a web server logfile in most cases, and that doesn't slow things down too much. Send the info to a separate logging server/db. If you're getting a lot of traffic, you're possibly doing a lot of queries anyway - one more is incrementally painful, but shouldn't be a killer.
- meaty 14y ago
  That's naive and inefficient. We only care if there is a system error, if the user phones up or they fill in the online support form. This is only to satisfy the path of the phone call. Everything else is passed around with context. For the phone call, our logging system has a web interface (log4net appender -> postgres -> asp.net web forms page). you just visit a web page and copy and type the error ID in and you get everything from the entire context, session and client info to the stack dump.

nodata 14y ago

Unless your client's problem is "I can't log in", why not just look in your log to see which browser they are on?

mileszs 14y ago
It's actually a lot easier, unless you have next-to-zero traffic, to ask _them_ to take an action that puts the info in your inbox, rather than dig in logs, which could have that specific user's information buried amongst hundreds of other entries. It's a time-saver. What if you have insufficient logging (Heroku sans a decent logging plugin, for instance)? What if you built the thing, but it's hosted by a third-party that limits log access? What if you want some non-technical or not-that-technical person to handle the issue? As hackers, we tend toward "do-it-yourself", but there are a lot of cases where that isn't practical or economical.
- nodata 14y ago
  If you can't quickly identify your client in your logs you will have bigger problems.
  - Argorak 14y ago
    Sure, but the usual support rep has no log access. But using a good knowledge base, he can answer things like "Flash 9 doesn't work" without tech assistance.
    - nodata 14y ago
      Why doesn't the tech support rep have access to the information he needs? The data is in the organisation.
      - Argorak 14y ago
        Because he might not be qualified to read it and providing an aggregation of said data in a consumable form is too much implementation work? In some organizations, he is not even allowed to read operational data without pre-screening.

rplnt 14y ago

It detects that I have a Flash plugin. While this is correct, I have plugin on demand enabled, so it is not available until I either play it or whitelist it. Tested with Opera and Chrome. (Firefox supports it as well.) Could lead to some confusion.

adandy 14y ago

It reports Windows Phone 8 as Windows 8.

jonaldomo 14y ago

@jonasvp: I would be extermely interested in reading about how many people signed up for the service if you would be willing to share. As well as any other one service products you guys sell.

ComputerGuru 14y ago

One of these gets posted on HN every month. I'm sorry, but I don't get the big deal. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4499435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4499435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3526446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3526446 and more.

thirit 14y ago
And this product was already posted in one of those threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4499937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4499937

kvirani 14y ago

The Authentication forms should ideally submit to HTTPS, but it looks like you haven't setup SSL, but should.

deepGem 14y ago

https://aboutmybrowser.com/ https://aboutmybrowser.com/ does the same without any signups

dubcanada 14y ago
Oh look this one has a unique url.

prince_hakeem 14y ago

feature not a product

Kerrick 14y ago

I've always been a fan of this one: http://supportdetails.com http://supportdetails.com But, yours supports a few more details.