MVP done 🎉🎉 - E04S01 My Browser Extension Journey.
Hola Hackers!
🎉🎉 After having hundreds of issues, project-related and unrelated. Helium Tools 💨 MVP is ready to be tested 🎉🎉
It has been published as Hidden in the Chrome WebStore. So please follow the link to try it out: Helium Tools beta
Please keep in mind that this is an absolute BETA version, so expect weird errors. And please please, let me know if you found one!
Now let's talk about some of the features I've built. 💪
The main idea behind Helium Tools is to have a set of tools that will help you to translate any type of input (text, audio, video, etc) in a variety of day to day scenarios.
The first tool is the simplest one: Translator
This is the standard translation box you will see in most translation extensions. You have more than 100 languages to translate, and you can also listen to the translation audio (similar to google.translate)
I'm planning to add more cool features to this tool in the future. 😍
The other tool available is Typer 🔥
This project actually started because of this tool. I personally use Typer a lot, because I need to constantly write emails in different languages and if you want to check everything you write by copy-pasting it in another translator, at the end of the day you'll spend a lot of time doing the same thing. But with Typer this process is pretty fast and effortless.
What problem does Typer solve?
Have you ever had to write an email in a foreign language you don't speak? Or maybe you have to type in a search bar in another language a word you don't know? Well... Typer will help you a lot.
In most cases, you will go to google translate, write whatever you need, copy the translated text and paste it into your email body, search bar, etc. If you do that many times in a day... well you got the point.
How to use it?
Once you've clicked on a textarea or input you want to type in, a black little circle will appear on the top-right corner of the focused box. Click it, and the Typer Box will automatically appear next to the textarea/input. Then, as soon as you start typing, Typer will automatically translate the text you type, and when you're done just click on Insert to paste the translated text in the same place as the original text was. oooohhhhhhhhh 😯
You can always disable Typer if you don't like it, and only use Translator, or the tool you want.
Pro Tip: Go to settings and set the language you want for the extension, and also go to the Tool's settings and configure it as you please.
What's next?
In the coming months (1 or 2) I'll probably do bug fixing and a landing page. Once that's finished I will continue with other tools I have in mind: Brain and Subs.
Thanks a lot for your support and feedback! ❤️
Hey this looks really cool! Are you planning on monetizing it?
I just tried it out and I'm impressed by the visual design and the translations seem fast and good! Nice job! One little thing I think would be nice is if you made a little tutorial for Typer. The black dot was not obvious at all. I think it would be good to open a page on install with a little demo showing how to use it.
And as a little tip for your eventual Chrome Store release: it may help to have keywords in your extension name to aid in organic discovery like "Helium Tools — Translate as you type"
Hey! Thanks for the nice feedback, I really appreciate it!! :)
I'm planning to monetize it, but I'm afraid that I'm a bit far from that.....coz I want some other Tools available, and hopefully a decent amount of users.
Regarding tutorials, I'm planning to add a video for each Tool. But this is something that will be on the web site (coming at helium.tools :)
I'm also planning to do something with that black dot... but I really wanted to release this as soon as possible to have some feedback (hopefully similar to yours :)
Thanks a lot for the Title idea! Sounds great!
Cheers,
Cool! Whenever you want to add payments to your extension you might want to check out ExtensionPay! It's a service I made that lets you charge for extensions across all browsers without having to run your own server or write your own backend/billing.
I'll definitely have a look!!