New Accounts feature

[samejr]

Hello! 👋 Let's talk Accounts!

I'd like to start a discussion about a new Accounts feature for JSON Hero that I've been wireframing. I'd love to hear your thoughts and get as much feedback and suggestions as possible so we can make this as awesome as possible. 🚀

1. Let's start with signing up

The header would get a few new buttons:

If you click '#' there'll be a new # modal. For version 1, we thought it best to add Github account # only. We can add more at a later date.

2. Next up - a new Dashboard

The main purpose of the dashboard is to keep a history and give you control of the documents you create and the ones you've viewed. I've also combined this page with your profile information. This page would become https://jsonhero.io when logged in.

3. How would sharing work?

When you are logged in, any documents you create will remain private to you by default.

You can create a shareable link for each document by toggling on the Sharing feature in this new Share modal:

To keep link sharing secure, logged our users would still be able to use JSON Hero normally, but saving and sharing documents would be restricted with a time limit.

4. Anything else?

Just a few more things. To keep the UI consistent, we're proposing to give the New document panel some more real estate by putting it into a modal:

We also want a quick way to access some of the meta data in JSON documents so are proposing a new slide over panel accesses from a new toggle icon in the side menu bar:

The Accounts dropdown menu would link to the dashboard, display your top 5 starred documents and log you out. Oh, and we're proposing to add a new toast feature for better notifications:

What do ya think? Please drop a comment or ask questions below.

[matt-aitken]

I want to double check what happens if I make a file public and then change it back to private. Presumably the URL will return a 404 for other people looking at it?

[om-ray]

that would make sense, something like what github does with their 404 pages would be nice

[samejr]

Yes it would return a 404 - we have that already: https://jsonhero.io/j/d9udW60cLOok1

[om-ray]

i think that 404 page fits great with the overall theme

[matt-aitken]

I think the top-bar is getting a bit crowded on the right hand side.

A few of these operations feel like they're related to the current file. Can share and fork move to be near the title in the middle?

[om-ray]

instead of having words do you think it would be possible to use icons? I feel like it would help with the litter and also make it a lot easier to understand at a glance instead of having to read

[samejr]

Focusing on icons to simplify it is a good idea. If you'd like to get involved and take a swing on some ideas, that would be awesome 🥇

[samejr]

In case it's useful, here are some things I'll be considering when coming up with solutions for this design:

• Refer to other products that solve the clutter problem well. Info-dense products like Airtable, Asana, CodeSandbox etc might be good candidates to reference.
• The hierarchy for the links will likely change if you're logged in vs logged out.
• Per @matt-aitken's point above, a nice way to split the info might be to collect the file-specific links together somehow.
• We might want to retain a strong promotion CTA – like the Github Stars button so might be worth not demoting everything in the hierarchy too far.

Food for thought…

[om-ray]

I was thinking that if the person isn't signed in we could put the file-related options in some sort of collapsible drop-down menu so that things like forking, starring, and signing up would be the main focus.

This would change after they #, with forking and starring as simple icons and the file-related links as buttons.

[matt-aitken]

I don't 100% understand whether sharing is available or not when logged out? Is the suggestion that you can share but the file would expire after 24 hours?

[matt-aitken]

Proposal

• Logging in means you can create long-lived documents
• Sharing is always available, logged in or not
• If sharing a document that is going to expire we make it clear it's going to expire. Give the option to login to make the document permanent.

[samejr]

I like this suggestion 👍