Is there anything more satisfying than reviving some random old appliance with a pdf service manual found on the internet?
Like any other comment, I will ask the same. How did you get 1 million manuals? Show HN is for small projects usually. Can you tell us or tell us a range you paid for the 1 million manuals?
Hello, it looks nice but have a look https://manualsbrain.com/en/ it's bigger and grows
Your privacy policy mentions fixlib.com which appears to be up for sale.
Curious: how did you get hold of all the manuals, and hope did you process them all?
This is very cool and useful, will be bookmarking for sure. Some of the websites you come across when googling manuals are... less than reputable.
My first suggestion after browsing around for a while is that you need a better embedded PDF viewer. Some manuals are not readable at all[0], it would be cool if we could zoom in. It's especially disappointing because of the huge amount of wasted space in the main pane - why is there a huge light-blue border around the content I want to see?
This is less spammy than most of these databases, but please remove the captcha on “download pdf”.
Also, the first (and only) manual I tried gave a 404 after I solved the captcha. :-(
There was/is a German startup called “manualOne” which offered manuals as well, and I think the idea was to establish a connection between the customer and seller of devices (like a fridge or whatever), where the customer buys the fridge in an electronics store. Normally the seller would be “blind” as it does not know its customers. And offering manuals and whatnot would help to establish the b2c relationship.
Looks very cool! A couple things however that I noticed. There seem to be a lot of duplicates which clutter the search results. Also, the first thing I looked for was available, but the correct result didn't appear until the second page.
Data seems to be quite old, since it does not include e.g. OLED TVs.
1) I had very similar idea, How are you planning to monetize it ? 2) 10 years back I made a similar site using manuals online.com, 3) did you look at react-pdf ?
Amazing, bookmarked.
Where did you get all of them from, and is there a way of contributing manuals?
This is very cool :) would love to read a blog on the making this project :)
good luck!
i'll remember this website. Until now, i'm finding ifixit is a fantastic resource, but i'm always eager to expand my list.
this is very cool good luck
Suggestion: allow a list as an alternative to (or maybe even instead of) a gallery.
Too many titles start with the same text, and the gallery doesn't allow the user to see the full title except with a (slow or non-existent, depending on the platform) mouseover.
Update: I see that the dedicated brand pages are more useful than general search results, but it's very hard to navigate the list of brands (although obviously you can go directly to a brand by typing your own URL).