Plus
Web and SaaS
screenshot automation
SHOW HN2023
How HN took it
11 positive, 42 neutral or asking, 2 mixed, 23 critical, out of 78 comments about the project. Thread score -0.12.
Privacy: 0 for, 13 againstIdea: 8 for, 4 againstDesign: 3 for, 2 againstExecution: 0 for, 4 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Clever idea and useful for dashboards.
From 4 comments
Love the idea. Execution is tricky like others mentioned, but this is one of those slap forehead ideas on how simple and game changing it is if you can pull it off.
ctvo on HNInsanely cool. Nice work to the team!
arikr on HNI’ve long seen a need for this, brilliant.
rgrieselhuber on HNThis is sick! Thank you
kreas on HN
Clean, fresh landing page design.
From 1 comment
This product looks great, but I can’t get over how fresh the design of the landing page is. Great work
werber on HN
Objections
Storing and reusing user session cookies is a serious security and privacy risk.
From 4 comments
My guess is this works by uploading your browser's data (cookies, local storage, etc.) to Plus so that it can retake the screenshot with a headless browser even if the web page…
olalonde on HNBased on the Chrome extension's minified source code (via https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/plus/bnebanooamokkihfjepphafoekheipfh), with files like…
btown on HNThe idea is great, but what about security? When you get the user's cookie and session information (basically you're taking a snapshot of the browser and reproducing it at your…
yigitkonur35 on HN> We’re grabbing the browser session data Correct me if I’m wrong but this is disallowed by many end sites eg Google and circumvents oauth/any real security. If your very new…
cuuupid on HN
Enterprise IT would likely block it, and it may conflict with provider terms.
From 3 comments
A lot of orgs lock down access to cloud storage (eg only company managed OneDrive on company managed devices) to prevent these kinds of data leakage. So they’d block access to…
hnlmorg on HNWell managed companies will use one approved cloud tool like Onedrive or Gdrive and turn that off in permissions if they want. Just like this site will and should be blocked if…
rejectfinite on HN> We’re grabbing the browser session data Correct me if I’m wrong but this is disallowed by many end sites eg Google and circumvents oauth/any real security. If your very new…
cuuupid on HN
Screenshots of changing pages can break when layouts shift.
From 2 comments
The idea is really cool, but implementation seems hard to get right. Apart from the security issues mentioned by others (related to storing user auth/session data), what happens…
XCSme on HNYes? When you take a screenshot, its contents are known and fixed. When you regularly and automatically refresh a screenshot of a particular x/y coordinate part of a specific…
ceejayoz on HN
Requests
Support for scraping underlying data, not just images.
From 1 comment
Any plans to actually scrape the data instead of just the images? Having the actual data saved in a tabular format would really make this a killer product... You could probably…
cphoover on HN
A local or self-hosted version without cloud processing.
From 1 comment
This is so clever. Love it. Would love a version that just runs locally without sending things to the cloud.
breck on HN
Questions
How are cookies and session data encrypted, and can employees access the keys?
From 2 comments
This looks really cool and clever. I do have a question about security though. The FAQ states: > Today, we encrypt all sensitive data on your computer before it is sent to our…
DandyDev on HN(I'm an EM at Plus) Yeah, we think about the permissions/data escape a lot. I'm glad to see others are commenting with scrutiny too. We've put a lot of effort into our security…
remixz on HN
How are expired authentication sessions handled?
From 1 comment
Very cool. How does Plus handle updating screenshots taken on authenticated pages once that authentication has expired?
babelfish on HN
Alternatives named
Arc browser live screenshots in Easels.
From 2 comments
This seems identical to the live screenshots you can add to an easel in the Arc browser [1]. I've created a view with that that shows a collection of different analytics sites,…
city17 on HNThis is pretty cool. It’s more or less a feature that is baked into the Arc browser, except in Arc you take snapshots of html elements instead of selecting an area of the screen.
Birkeholm on HN
Simon Willison's shot-scraper.
From 1 comment
Sounds a lot like Simon Willison's open source project shot-scraper https://github.com/simonw/shot-scraper
hecticjeff on HN
Tealeaf session replay enterprise product.
From 1 comment
For something enterprise scale, check out Tea Leaf. IBM ran the product for a while, I think now Acoustic has it. Many large F500 use this or other similar products:…
chevman on HN