– By Robert Wagner
This is the 20th in our DecEmber series–"Countdown to The New Year: 31 Days of Ember Addons". We plan to highlight a new addon each day until the new year, and we hope you'll join us for the fun!
Day 20
For the 20th edition of Countdown to The New Year we're going to take a
look at ember-shepherd
which allows you to add tours to your Ember app.
What It Does
The ember-shepherd addon provides an Ember wrapper for the site tour library
Shepherd, which allows you to seamlessly
configure your site tours with an Ember service.
It allows you to show new users around your app, introduce new features to existing users, or suggest a flow your users might follow to optimally use your app.
It is configurable to show modal overlays or not, and can be hooked up to your existing application flow to conditionally show steps or be controlled manually.
Why I Like It
Tours are an often overlooked feature of apps, and can be crucial to providing a good user experience. Without them, a user may feel lost in your app or do things in a way you did not intend.
The ember-shepherd addon makes adding these useful tours to your Ember app much easier than hand rolling them yourself. With the provided Ember service, you can add steps and interact with your tour in a familiar Ember way.
I really like providing these tours to users to make sure they can quickly get up to speed with my apps, rather than spending a lot of time getting lost in the app and having a less than optimal experience.
You can setup your own tours using ember-shepherd by following the docs here.
Do you use this addon? Or one like it? We'd love to hear about Ember addons that bring you joy!