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CTO of CoScreen here. I think it's a really good question and not snarky at all. This is honestly one of the biggest hurdles I think we have towards adoption.

CTO of CoScreen here. I think it's a really good question and not snarky at all. This is honestly one of the biggest hurdles I think we have towards adoption. We have bet a lot on the benefits of producing frictionless remote app-level sharing. At the moment you can share one application, or your entire desktop with other tools. Then there is the friction of allowing sharing, asking for sharing, or even down to just knowing where the remote user's cursor is at. CoScreen eliminates all of that. Anyone can share any window at any time. You see their shared cursor over your window that is translated into the adjusted coordinate space for that window. You can be discussing a piece of code, share vim in Alacritty, or iTerm. The remote user looks up some documentation, and immediately shares it with you. Or you have a Android/iOS emulator that you want to immediately preview your work in. Basically you're working in a shared working space more analogous to what you would experience in the office. It's a paradigm shift from video conferencing, and traditional screen sharing tools that I think has to be experienced to be understood. That being said it's going to be a great challenge to make this experience more transparent, and we are actively working on different scaling modes, the ability to move windows independent of remote users, and other concerns that we think will take it to the next level. Our goal is to facilitate things like pair programming by fading into the background and just letting you continue with your normal workflow while not thinking about the tooling behind it.

corytheboyd 6y ago
Thanks for taking the time to answer my bad question sincerely! Here's a situation that actually comes up all the time in my remote pairing sessions. Both peers have mutli-screen setups where a terminal (tailing logs, etc.), an IDE, and a web browser (perhaps even the browser dev tools) are all in separate windows, where some windows are on one display, some on another. With CoScreen, would "hey, can we check the logs real quick?" become as simple as the other peer clicking the window to add it to the session? That could be pretty big on its own IMO! Also really useful, as the non-driving peer is looking up documentation and adding it to the session for group reference. I'd love to try this out eventually, joining a new team soon and perhaps I can pull it off there if/when pairing needs arise!
- thedracle 6y ago
  "Thanks for taking the time to answer my bad question sincerely!" No problem! It's actually a great conversation starter. "With CoScreen, would "hey, can we check the logs real quick?" become as simple as the other peer clicking the window to add it to the session?" Basically yes, there is a tab that shows above your window. At the moment we have a shared context space, so your windows have a relative location that is based on the layout of the remote screen. Ultimately this helps in like the pair programming scenario you make above, but is a weakness in other situations: we are working on a model that will let you break all of the window locations apart, or relatively translate the position of another user's windows wherever you want. "I'd love to try this out eventually, joining a new team soon and perhaps I can pull it off there if/when pairing needs arise!" We'd love to hear your feedback. We rely heavily on our community to determine our development path, so please reach out to us when you do, and leave feedback!
mcstafford 6y ago
I see download options for Mac and Windows. Is Linux support in the works? Slack and Teams have us covered.
- coscreen 6y ago
  Linux support is indeed on the roadmap. We've got Windows done only last week and we'll get at it next... Happy to keep you in the loop, here's the sign up: https://form.typeform.com/to/tWKFDe https://form.typeform.com/to/tWKFDe
  - Hiopl 6y ago
    Ah, a bit of a shame that it isn't supported yet. This looks like something that might interest my team and I would've loved to try it, but we're all on Linux. Looking forward to hearing about that being implemented.

corytheboyd 6y ago

Thanks for taking the time to answer my bad question sincerely! Here's a situation that actually comes up all the time in my remote pairing sessions. Both peers have mutli-screen setups where a terminal (tailing logs, etc.), an IDE, and a web browser (perhaps even the browser dev tools) are all in separate windows, where some windows are on one display, some on another. With CoScreen, would "hey, can we check the logs real quick?" become as simple as the other peer clicking the window to add it to the session? That could be pretty big on its own IMO! Also really useful, as the non-driving peer is looking up documentation and adding it to the session for group reference. I'd love to try this out eventually, joining a new team soon and perhaps I can pull it off there if/when pairing needs arise!

thedracle 6y ago
"Thanks for taking the time to answer my bad question sincerely!" No problem! It's actually a great conversation starter. "With CoScreen, would "hey, can we check the logs real quick?" become as simple as the other peer clicking the window to add it to the session?" Basically yes, there is a tab that shows above your window. At the moment we have a shared context space, so your windows have a relative location that is based on the layout of the remote screen. Ultimately this helps in like the pair programming scenario you make above, but is a weakness in other situations: we are working on a model that will let you break all of the window locations apart, or relatively translate the position of another user's windows wherever you want. "I'd love to try this out eventually, joining a new team soon and perhaps I can pull it off there if/when pairing needs arise!" We'd love to hear your feedback. We rely heavily on our community to determine our development path, so please reach out to us when you do, and leave feedback!

mcstafford 6y ago

I see download options for Mac and Windows. Is Linux support in the works? Slack and Teams have us covered.

coscreen 6y ago
Linux support is indeed on the roadmap. We've got Windows done only last week and we'll get at it next... Happy to keep you in the loop, here's the sign up: https://form.typeform.com/to/tWKFDe https://form.typeform.com/to/tWKFDe
- Hiopl 6y ago
  Ah, a bit of a shame that it isn't supported yet. This looks like something that might interest my team and I would've loved to try it, but we're all on Linux. Looking forward to hearing about that being implemented.