HelpHub has a way to add a large CTA for that as a fallback. E.g. our own HelpHub implementation has a _Message Us_ button in the bottom to trigger a chat with a human support agent.
However, we do love to use our products! Once logged in, you will see that we replaced the Intercom chat widget with HelpHub there. We still offer Intercom chat as a fallback if you need to talk to a human.
Without knowing that product well, I think the main difference is that HelpHub is not just a ChatBot. It's also a full in-app help center with semantic search etc. The ChatBot integrates with the rest of the features and among other things links you to the sources it used to generate the answers.
I do so too, with quite similar arguments. I have a blog post about learning all VSCode Shortcuts[1] (did the same for PyCharm) and how it evolved my developing habits. Without learning the shortcuts, many IDE features are not usable. So, if you don't learn the shortcuts, you will not start to use these new features. Consequently, learning shortcuts on the go often does not work.
I fully agree also on creating your own cheat sheets. That's why I have developed an entire app around this idea: KeyCombiner[2]!
It let's you create your own collections, practice them via an interactive trainer and spaced repetition, look them up without context switch through the desktop app's instant look, visualize them on a virtual keyboard, etc.
I deployed two minor (unrelated) bug fixes shortly after posting on HN. I thought this works without downtime etc., but maybe you somehow downloaded an incomplete version of the JS code. Not sure how that could happen.
To be fair, you don't need to do all 19 lessons. They are grouped by importance and topic. If you just do the first 2 modules you will already feel quite comfortable with VSCode and I think those can be completed in less than an hour with very little prior experience.
I see your point and I wouldn't mind having something like that. However, much of KeyCombiner requires a database. It stores practice results, personal collections, you can change a lesson's combinations etc.
I feel like if I tried to do a demo mode without storage anonymous users would be left with a 2nd class experience and potentially think less of KeyCombiner.
However, there's already lots of things that anonymous users can do: Browse all public collections, courses, and lessons. Use the practice demo on the home page. Search through KeyCombiner's entire database of public shortcuts. And more.
There is KeyCombiner Desktop that enables practice of any browser-reserved shortcuts. Only OS-reserved bindings are still a problem, but fortunately there's very few of those.
KeyCombiner Desktop also comes with an instant lookup feature that let's you look up all shortcuts that are in your combined collections plus those of the currently active application. On macOS, KeyCombiner can even show the shortcuts for the active browser tab!
However, there are a few things that I think KeyCombiner does better. I am very biased though ;)
- You can edit any combination in your lessons or personal collections. So, if you bind some VSCode bindings to keys that you are used to from Sublime, that's not a problem.
- There are quite sophisticated statistics regarding your practice performance. Most importantly, a confidence value for every combination
- You can create your own collections to practice by copying from public collections, manually defining your own combinations, doing CSV import,...
- There is a desktop app that mitigates conflicts with browser (extension) shortcuts
- The desktop app has an instant lookup feature that shows you the shortcuts of the current app (+ current browser tab on macOS), and all the combinations in your personal collection and lessons. You can trigger the instant lookup from anywhere via a global shortcut, so you don't need to leave your current context.
Hmm, I think Chrome on macOS is probably the most common scenario and well tested.
Those 4 rectangles should contain the next 4 shortcuts that you have to type. Not sure how this could happen. If you don't mind, could you try with a different collection or lesson? Does the browser console show some errors?
Huh, practicing should definitely work also on Firefox. Could you give some more details. Does it work for you with Chrome? Does it work when you try the practice demo on the home page directly at keycombiner.com?
The only limitation with Firefox is that it does not support the navigator.keyboard API. So, the visual keyboard and some other advanced KeyCombiner features cannot show your system's keyboard layout but rather have to default to the US layout.
[2] A feature to look up shortcuts without leaving your current app. Can show shortcuts of the current app, current browser tab (macOS only), and shortcuts that you manually curated in collections.
> Keyboard shortcuts and commands have a discoverability problem that has not been commonly solved [...]
You might want to have a look at KeyCombiner Desktop[1], an application that can show the shortcuts for the current app without leaving it. On macOS, it even shows shortcuts for the current browser tab.
This solved the problem for me. Disclaimer: I made KeyCombiner
Your students are lucky! ;)
If you ever have any ideas how KeyCombiner could make your life as a teacher easier, you are very welcome to drop me a line.