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Show HN: Honeybadger Chrome Extension

27 points by jaequery 12y ago

jaequery 12y ago
I'm sure this extension will serve useful to you as it has done for me and my colleagues. Hope you enjoy it!
- drdaeman 12y ago
  Mind-blown! I can't browse websites without it! /s
davidw 12y ago
Ok, but what's it doing behind the scenes? I'm not sure I'd trust something that's exchanging data about what I'm browsing with a lot of sites...
- jaequery 12y ago
  Hi David, well I should make it clear that it does nothing else behind the scenes other than make an HTTP call to get website data only when you hit click to get the data, that's about the only thing it does. I get wary of other extensions too when I install but I can tell you this app does not track sites you browse if that's your concern (you can inspect it yourself and see).
  - MDCore 12y ago
    > but I can tell you this app does not track sites you browse Except for this snippet of code in popup.js of course. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-40692955-5']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); Edit: I tested this with a console.log, and it output immediately on page load, without clicking anything.
    - uptownhr 12y ago
      Not that's its impossible but popup.js is local to the extension.
tzaman 12y ago
The orange nearly killed my eyes. Apart from that, why do you use fake testimonials? I'm assuming that, since in the bottom you have a person, called "Antonina K. Director of Operations, TrustGuard". The lady on the picture is Sarah Parmenter: http://ios-blog.co.uk/featured-posts/sarah-parmenter-web-and-ui-designer/ http://ios-blog.co.uk/featured-posts/sarah-parmenter-web-and...
- jaequery 12y ago
  Please understand this is a beta release, I've cut many corners left and right to just get it out as it is.
  - drcoopster 12y ago
    I'm not sure that blatant testimonial fabrication and deception is really cutting corners.
    - DanielStraight 12y ago
      Not to mention using someone's likeness to endorse your product without their permission. I would imagine that is actually illegal.
      - jt2190 12y ago
        I knew a professional photographer who loved it when websites used his images without permission, because he made a lot more money.
      - hopeless 12y ago
        That is illegal — and it's why photographers need to get model releases
  - acangiano 12y ago
    You cut a corner you shouldn't have.
rubiquity 12y ago
Were you aware that an exception handling service named Honeybadger already exists?[0] 0 - https://honeybadger.io https://honeybadger.io
- sergiotapia 12y ago
  I actually thought this would integrate somehow to the service. So you're telling me this is completely unrelated to Honeybadger the company?
  - rubiquity 12y ago
    As far as I can tell, yes this is completely unrelated to Honeybadger the company.
- hopeless 12y ago
  What?! I actually thought this was a little side project by Honeybadger(.io). Poor form. Added: using the same orange helped the deception.
sudhirj 12y ago
The Technology section is completely off the mark and seems to be choosing servers and partners completely at random. Where are you pulling it from?
- jaequery 12y ago
  yes its definitely off the mark at the moment, i'll be looking into it.
drcoopster 12y ago
You couldn't come up with a less-lame name? And the "leave feedback" button being a mailing list subscription form?
robmcm 12y ago
The fact you have a quote from "Antonina K. Director of Operations, TrustGuard" with a photo of "Sarah Parmenter, Owner of You Know Who" makes me think you made them up. I wonder how many testimonials on the web are actually real?
- davidw 12y ago
  > I wonder how many testimonials on the web are actually real? 88.231%, which is a bit higher than the number of made up statistics, coming in at 71.9231%.
- outworlder 12y ago
  That depends. Do you require them to be in their original context and be still current? If not, yes, I have seen some "real" ones.
sudhirj 12y ago
Am I the only one trying to figure out when the intro video was made based on the HN frontpage it shows?
- dewey 12y ago
  May 16, 11:17 PM. Top right corner ;)
wbond 12y ago
Interesting little tool, however, the "Built With" section was 100% incorrect/random for the few sites I checked.
- ohadron 12y ago
  For me as well. Seems completely random and false even for things that are extremely easy to detect such as Google Analytics.
king-coconut 12y ago
Doesn't really work, shows only a blank white window, no info visible on any of the sites I tried. Does the plugin work through www-proxy?
andyhmltn 12y ago
Nice little app! Just a little honest observation though: Is anything in the tech section actually true? I just checked my personal site and it came up with technologies I've never heard of. It also said I use 'bitpay' for payments
- jaequery 12y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out, there is a technical difficulty with the builtwith stats right now, looking into it.
  - andyhmltn 12y ago
    Awesome nice work!
icefox 12y ago
So what does it do? The text on the webpage doesn't actually say.
- Bassetts 12y ago
  > At the mere click of a button, our honeybadger will let you see how much traffic the site gets, how much money they raised, what powers their stack, and much more.
BaconJuice 12y ago
those testimonials seem fake? are they fake?
LukeB_UK 12y ago
The site gives me absolutely no information about what this extension actually does. "Juicy informations" could literally be anything.
mtford 12y ago
So, HN was built with Stiqr and reddit was built with Website Tonight...?
- jaequery 12y ago
  Ah, I see what you guys are saying now. I'll have to look it up why its doing this!
raghavb 12y ago
The most useful/interesting for me is the technology section. As that's not the easiest to get data about. Unfortunately the info that its giving is completely false/random. Checked it on a few websites that I've built or know the stack and the info shown is completely wrong. www.builtwith.com provides much more information but they do not have a chrome plugin that I'm aware of. Definitely should check it out if your interested in this plugin.
- jaequery 12y ago
  Could you give me an example of a site you did? Although I know it's not 100% accurate, from my experience, they were fairly accurate. I am pulling data from builtwith.com btw.
  - dukekarthik 12y ago
    builtwith.com shows proper data but the extension shows completely random information.
    - jaequery 12y ago
      yeah i see it now
    - jaequery 12y ago
      so apparently we ran out of credits on builtwith. :(
ryangripp 12y ago
Now we just need a Honeybadger Firefox edition
quasque 12y ago
Your whois lookup is broken for ac.uk domains - for example, all of these requests return the whois data for ac.uk itself, rather than the specified domain: http://gethoneybadger.com:8080/whois/ox.ac.uk http://gethoneybadger.com:8080/whois/ox.ac.uk http://gethoneybadger.com:8080/whois/cam.ac.uk http://gethoneybadger.com:8080/whois/cam.ac.uk http://gethoneybadger.com:8080/whois/dur.ac.uk http://gethoneybadger.com:8080/whois/dur.ac.uk (This list might help to uncover other problems like this: https://publicsuffix.org/ https://publicsuffix.org/)
sullivanmatt 12y ago
I will start by saying that the site color scheme is pretty sharp for my eyes. I think you'll have a more polished look by having the background be white with a more neutral color palette. For the extension itself: I like that it doesn't call out for information unless called upon, but if I ask for information about a site, I see no reason for you to have to collect the full URL and POST it to /track. That could lead to unexpected data leakage (as some URLs could be sensitive). You should probably get those API calls over to using HTTPS as well. Also with every lookup, my console gets the log message "asdf", which is kind of weird. One thing I noticed is that the extension is pretty slow to get information. It appears it calls out for each item individually, and this leads to seven unique calls to your API that could be condensed into one request / response. If an API call fails with a 500 error, the entire stacktrace is dumped to the user. You'll want to disable debugging mode in your Express app to ensure that doesn't happen. Since these APIs are public, you might want to consider rate limiting by IP, or you might find that your extension isn't the only consumer of them. A free and open WHOIS or Geolocation API that responds with JSON could be abused by other app developers, and having that already around moves the cost from them to you.
gyardley 12y ago
It might be an awesome extension, but if it's not related to the company at honeybadger.io, you need to rename the thing. Even if the similarity was completely inadvertent, it's just going to lead to confusion and legal hassle, and could end up hurting your reputation more than the functionality of the extension will help it.
- dingaling 12y ago
  A more traditional name for honey badger is the Boer 'ratel'. It's also catchier - might make a better product name.
lorenzhs 12y ago
Injecting Google Analytics into each and every page I visit is not cool, mate... I uninstalled it again.
- uptownhr 12y ago
  GA is not being injected into pages. it's only tracking the times you click on the extension button.
bichiliad 12y ago
So you know, your "Leave Feedback" button seems to lead to a survey / feedback form for "Competition Tab," rather than Honeybadger. Edit: For what it's worth, if the plugin really does what it says it does on the Chrome Webstore page, it sounds really, really useful. Will try later.

27 points by jaequery 12y ago

jaequery 12y ago

I'm sure this extension will serve useful to you as it has done for me and my colleagues. Hope you enjoy it!

drdaeman 12y ago
Mind-blown! I can't browse websites without it! /s

davidw 12y ago

Ok, but what's it doing behind the scenes? I'm not sure I'd trust something that's exchanging data about what I'm browsing with a lot of sites...

jaequery 12y ago
Hi David, well I should make it clear that it does nothing else behind the scenes other than make an HTTP call to get website data only when you hit click to get the data, that's about the only thing it does. I get wary of other extensions too when I install but I can tell you this app does not track sites you browse if that's your concern (you can inspect it yourself and see).
- MDCore 12y ago
  > but I can tell you this app does not track sites you browse Except for this snippet of code in popup.js of course. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-40692955-5']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); Edit: I tested this with a console.log, and it output immediately on page load, without clicking anything.
  - uptownhr 12y ago
    Not that's its impossible but popup.js is local to the extension.

tzaman 12y ago

The orange nearly killed my eyes. Apart from that, why do you use fake testimonials? I'm assuming that, since in the bottom you have a person, called "Antonina K. Director of Operations, TrustGuard". The lady on the picture is Sarah Parmenter: http://ios-blog.co.uk/featured-posts/sarah-parmenter-web-and-ui-designer/ http://ios-blog.co.uk/featured-posts/sarah-parmenter-web-and...

jaequery 12y ago
Please understand this is a beta release, I've cut many corners left and right to just get it out as it is.
- drcoopster 12y ago
  I'm not sure that blatant testimonial fabrication and deception is really cutting corners.
  - DanielStraight 12y ago
    Not to mention using someone's likeness to endorse your product without their permission. I would imagine that is actually illegal.
    - jt2190 12y ago
      I knew a professional photographer who loved it when websites used his images without permission, because he made a lot more money.
    - hopeless 12y ago
      That is illegal — and it's why photographers need to get model releases
- acangiano 12y ago
  You cut a corner you shouldn't have.

rubiquity 12y ago

Were you aware that an exception handling service named Honeybadger already exists?[0] 0 - https://honeybadger.io https://honeybadger.io

sergiotapia 12y ago
I actually thought this would integrate somehow to the service. So you're telling me this is completely unrelated to Honeybadger the company?
- rubiquity 12y ago
  As far as I can tell, yes this is completely unrelated to Honeybadger the company.
hopeless 12y ago
What?! I actually thought this was a little side project by Honeybadger(.io). Poor form. Added: using the same orange helped the deception.

sudhirj 12y ago

The Technology section is completely off the mark and seems to be choosing servers and partners completely at random. Where are you pulling it from?

jaequery 12y ago
yes its definitely off the mark at the moment, i'll be looking into it.

drcoopster 12y ago

You couldn't come up with a less-lame name? And the "leave feedback" button being a mailing list subscription form?

robmcm 12y ago

The fact you have a quote from "Antonina K. Director of Operations, TrustGuard" with a photo of "Sarah Parmenter, Owner of You Know Who" makes me think you made them up. I wonder how many testimonials on the web are actually real?

davidw 12y ago
> I wonder how many testimonials on the web are actually real? 88.231%, which is a bit higher than the number of made up statistics, coming in at 71.9231%.
outworlder 12y ago
That depends. Do you require them to be in their original context and be still current? If not, yes, I have seen some "real" ones.

sudhirj 12y ago

Am I the only one trying to figure out when the intro video was made based on the HN frontpage it shows?

dewey 12y ago
May 16, 11:17 PM. Top right corner ;)

wbond 12y ago

Interesting little tool, however, the "Built With" section was 100% incorrect/random for the few sites I checked.

ohadron 12y ago
For me as well. Seems completely random and false even for things that are extremely easy to detect such as Google Analytics.

king-coconut 12y ago

Doesn't really work, shows only a blank white window, no info visible on any of the sites I tried. Does the plugin work through www-proxy?

andyhmltn 12y ago

Nice little app! Just a little honest observation though: Is anything in the tech section actually true? I just checked my personal site and it came up with technologies I've never heard of. It also said I use 'bitpay' for payments

jaequery 12y ago
Thanks for pointing that out, there is a technical difficulty with the builtwith stats right now, looking into it.
- andyhmltn 12y ago
  Awesome nice work!

icefox 12y ago

So what does it do? The text on the webpage doesn't actually say.

Bassetts 12y ago
> At the mere click of a button, our honeybadger will let you see how much traffic the site gets, how much money they raised, what powers their stack, and much more.

BaconJuice 12y ago

those testimonials seem fake? are they fake?

LukeB_UK 12y ago

The site gives me absolutely no information about what this extension actually does. "Juicy informations" could literally be anything.

mtford 12y ago

So, HN was built with Stiqr and reddit was built with Website Tonight...?

jaequery 12y ago
Ah, I see what you guys are saying now. I'll have to look it up why its doing this!

raghavb 12y ago

The most useful/interesting for me is the technology section. As that's not the easiest to get data about. Unfortunately the info that its giving is completely false/random. Checked it on a few websites that I've built or know the stack and the info shown is completely wrong. www.builtwith.com provides much more information but they do not have a chrome plugin that I'm aware of. Definitely should check it out if your interested in this plugin.

jaequery 12y ago
Could you give me an example of a site you did? Although I know it's not 100% accurate, from my experience, they were fairly accurate. I am pulling data from builtwith.com btw.
- dukekarthik 12y ago
  builtwith.com shows proper data but the extension shows completely random information.
  - jaequery 12y ago
    yeah i see it now
  - jaequery 12y ago
    so apparently we ran out of credits on builtwith. :(

ryangripp 12y ago

Now we just need a Honeybadger Firefox edition

quasque 12y ago

Your whois lookup is broken for ac.uk domains - for example, all of these requests return the whois data for ac.uk itself, rather than the specified domain: http://gethoneybadger.com:8080/whois/ox.ac.uk http://gethoneybadger.com:8080/whois/ox.ac.uk http://gethoneybadger.com:8080/whois/cam.ac.uk http://gethoneybadger.com:8080/whois/cam.ac.uk http://gethoneybadger.com:8080/whois/dur.ac.uk http://gethoneybadger.com:8080/whois/dur.ac.uk (This list might help to uncover other problems like this: https://publicsuffix.org/ https://publicsuffix.org/)

sullivanmatt 12y ago

I will start by saying that the site color scheme is pretty sharp for my eyes. I think you'll have a more polished look by having the background be white with a more neutral color palette. For the extension itself: I like that it doesn't call out for information unless called upon, but if I ask for information about a site, I see no reason for you to have to collect the full URL and POST it to /track. That could lead to unexpected data leakage (as some URLs could be sensitive). You should probably get those API calls over to using HTTPS as well. Also with every lookup, my console gets the log message "asdf", which is kind of weird. One thing I noticed is that the extension is pretty slow to get information. It appears it calls out for each item individually, and this leads to seven unique calls to your API that could be condensed into one request / response. If an API call fails with a 500 error, the entire stacktrace is dumped to the user. You'll want to disable debugging mode in your Express app to ensure that doesn't happen. Since these APIs are public, you might want to consider rate limiting by IP, or you might find that your extension isn't the only consumer of them. A free and open WHOIS or Geolocation API that responds with JSON could be abused by other app developers, and having that already around moves the cost from them to you.

gyardley 12y ago

It might be an awesome extension, but if it's not related to the company at honeybadger.io, you need to rename the thing. Even if the similarity was completely inadvertent, it's just going to lead to confusion and legal hassle, and could end up hurting your reputation more than the functionality of the extension will help it.

dingaling 12y ago
A more traditional name for honey badger is the Boer 'ratel'. It's also catchier - might make a better product name.

lorenzhs 12y ago

Injecting Google Analytics into each and every page I visit is not cool, mate... I uninstalled it again.

uptownhr 12y ago
GA is not being injected into pages. it's only tracking the times you click on the extension button.

bichiliad 12y ago

So you know, your "Leave Feedback" button seems to lead to a survey / feedback form for "Competition Tab," rather than Honeybadger. Edit: For what it's worth, if the plugin really does what it says it does on the Chrome Webstore page, it sounds really, really useful. Will try later.