from Hacker News

How Google takes feedback

by theone on 9/22/12, 8:30 AM with 40 comments

• by jonknee on 9/22/12, 3:50 PM

  Here's a discussion about how the screenshot functionality works (which is the part that I think everyone here is impressed with).

  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4912092/using-html5-canva...

  tl;dr JavaScript can read the DOM and render a fairly accurate representation of that using canvas

• by pveugen on 9/22/12, 10:53 AM

  Indeed very cool. Usabilla offers a same form of feedback: http://usabilla.com/products#usabilla_live (see also button on the right side of the page).

  How it works:

  1. You create a widget and add two lines of code to your site. 2. Visitors click the feedback button and can select highlight any part of the page to comment on. 3. Usabilla creates a screenshot (server-side) and shows feedback in a simple dashboard.

  Disclaimer: I'm founder of Usabilla.

• by premist on 9/22/12, 11:05 AM

  Open source solution : http://experiments.hertzen.com/jsfeedback/

  It uses html2canvas to generate site screenshot on client side.

• by dawernik on 9/22/12, 8:05 PM

  I wish Google would share the process post submission and how they analyze and respond to feedback. I find a process like this to capture feedback over <or disproportionately> solving the easy part of a feedback loop.

  I have to imagine that Google has a pretty automated process to understand the feedback - i'd rather see that. That's the problem I've always had with applications with millions of users.

• by naww on 9/22/12, 5:46 PM

  Still no way to contact human for a problem. No feedback or any kind of acknowledgement about anything.

  And my only problem with Google only appears when I'm not logged in. The irony.

• by mikecane on 9/22/12, 2:24 PM

  What good is Feedback when Google is determined to take away features from something like Google Books? You can complain all you want but they won't revert. Just making it easier to complain does nothing to fix anything.

• by ditzy on 9/22/12, 11:59 AM

  This feedback webapp had been available to Google+ users since Google+ initially launched as invite only to the public. It used to be at the bottom right of the page.

• by theone on 9/22/12, 5:12 PM

  you can get idea about how its done from, http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/streaming/screenshare...

• by ams6110 on 9/22/12, 3:35 PM

  It's a neat bit of coding, but is it really easier than just snapping a screenshot and attaching it to an email? I know what I think.....

• by joshka on 9/22/12, 11:49 AM

  Doesn't seem to work for google reader or google code. :(

• by zhuzhuor on 9/22/12, 3:41 PM

  does Google have customer service?