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Show HN: my collaborative drawing webapp
- aagha 15y agoFantastic! I think it's a great idea. I think you're missing a couple of basic tools: - Tex - Basic shapes Edit: Removed eraser from list. Noticed there was one.
- senko 15y agoThanks! I wanted to stick to the whiteboarding/sketching basics - you get a pen and an eraser. Perhaps it makes sense to add a few more tools, but I'm wary of adding too much, because I want it to be useable on really small screens, without keyboard, and with touch input, as opposed to only mouse. For a sophisticated HTML drawing app (albeit not collaborative one, and not very usable without a pointing device), take look at the awesome DeviantArt Muro app (http://muro.deviantart.com/ http://muro.deviantart.com/).
- senko 15y agoA small HTML canvas drawing app (and embeddable widget) I did so I could use my (non-iPad) tablet for drawing quick sketches. A few people suggested I add collaboration, which was a nice excuse to play with node.js :) Tech used: node.js/nowjs for synchronising the drawings, jquery/canvas for the frontend, flask for saving/posting the images.
- robfitz 15y agoThe syncing doesn't work for me when I open 2 browsers and share it to myself..? Does it just share the initial state (which worked great) or also updates?
- senko 15y agoIt should share the updates too. If it doesn't work for you, could you please let me know which browsers you use (here, tweet to @awwapp or mail me)? Thanks!
- joeyespo 15y agoWas just about to ask about the syncing. Nice job, it's fun! And thanks for this comment.
- cstuder 15y agoClickable link to a work in progress: http://awwapp.com/draw.html#ScK6YsOrwp http://awwapp.com/draw.html#ScK6YsOrwp
- senko 15y agoSorry, the process consumed all the memory and got killed :( Wasn't expecting so much activity on a single board :) Was fun to watch!
- cstuder 15y agoYes, it was a fun five-minutes-community. (The first penis showed up 30 seconds later...)
- couriernew 15y agoThe mass erasure of 3:30 still haunts us all.
- dotBen 15y agoHere is a new shared canvas: http://awwapp.com/draw.html#BW0Gw6c2w4 http://awwapp.com/draw.html#BW0Gw6c2w4 EDIT: Looks like this one got killed too :( How many concurrent connections can this take, Senko?
- senko 15y agoAs many as the memory allows (and up to 1024, but was nowhere close that number), and I think that wasn't the problem here - but it seems that once the canvas has been drawn on for long enough, the new users just can't get the previous image. I'll have to refactor the initial loading code, at the moment it naively passes all the previous drawing operations to the client with no regards to the limits. Sorry about this, hopefully I'll be able to fix these problems soon.
- stephen_mcd 15y agoWe did something similar for Django Dash a couple weeks ago: http://drawnby.jupo.org/ http://drawnby.jupo.org/ Knocked up in 48 hours with Django, WebSockets and Redis All open source: https://github.com/stephenmcd/drawnby https://github.com/stephenmcd/drawnby Released django-socketio a week later born out of that project: https://github.com/stephenmcd/django-socketio https://github.com/stephenmcd/django-socketio
- o1iver 15y agoI was going to try it, but, honest feedback, the fact that I have to login before even giving it a go is a real no-go. Why don't you let me try before signing in?
- stephen_mcd 15y agoFair point and something we considered - we wanted to always have a valid account when drawing so that users could be identified when collaborating together, and with only 48 hours to get everything working the quickest way was to slap on Twitter/Facebook authentication.
- wyclif 15y agoThe English copy on the home page needs a slight, but important once-over. "A Web Whiteboard is touch-friendly whiteboard app..." should be written: "Web Whiteboard is a touch-friendly whiteboard app..."
- senko 15y agoThanks for catching it! Yeah, not a native speaker, will ask someone to go through it (the wording on the "add to your site" could probably be improved as well)
- ThePawnBreak 15y agoIt would be very helpful if you put a Clear button somewhere more accesible, but hard to click by mistake, such as in the lower left. Also, don't ask me if I want to clearn the page.
- matiu 15y agoWhat's it written in ?
- brainless 15y agoAbsolutely fun app. tried on iPad2, Chrome13 on Mac, Safari 5.1 on Mac. If you draw fast then the curves become more like straight lines, I am sure you are improving that...
- senko 15y agoThanks! Yeah, the app draws a line between the points. This isn't noticable if you're drawing slower (or if the device is fast enough), but if you're driving faster than it can be processed, the lines do show. I'll try to see how to improve on that, the plan is for the app to be useful on Android phones and iPhones as well.
- bornon5 15y agoEven in Photoshop, if you draw a very quick curve, you can see individual vertices along it. But Photoshop seems to quickly interpolate curves instead of straight lines, so you get a rough approximation of the curve you're drawing between the vertices. It's pretty good for hiding how it works. Very nice app, by the way.
- senko 15y agoBtw I've also added it to Chrome Web Store, so it can be added to Chrome as an app: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mhmonflnoepbijmbbfipoifgkbibofgd https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mhmonflnoepbijmbbf... (nothing fancy, just goes to the website)
- fab1an 15y agoGreat job. You should add a 'submit to Reddit' button, too!
- senko 15y agoThanks! Yeah, perhaps a row of those "submit to your favorite site/forum" social buttons.
- danest 15y agoThis looks awesome. This reminds me a little bit like the facebook application I use to play with before. http://www.facebook.com/graffitiwall http://www.facebook.com/graffitiwall Except this one is more real time, but I would love a replay feature to show what people have been drawing before me.
- geogra4 15y agoEvery time I try to load a shared link I keep getting a "Cannot Join Shared Drawing" popup error
- senko 15y agoSorry about that! Either the drawing is shared no more (eg the one linked in these comments - if that's the case, you'll always get the error trying to go to that drawing), or you've found a bug. In the latter case case, could you please tell me your browser/os combo? here, in a tweet to @awwapp or in the mail (listed in my HN profile page). Thanks!
- geogra4 15y agoOk, I think that must have been the issue. The drawing must be open on the browser window of the person who shares the drawing.
- tyohn 15y agoI like it but maybe add an undo button?
- mbyrne 15y agoAwesome work. I wanted to let you know that the erase function is not working on Firefox 3.6.19 Mac. I share the image with a Safari browser and the image there is erased when I erase in FF window but the erasure doesn't show up in the FF window I erased in.
- senko 15y agoThanks for the report, I'll look into it.
- ashishg 15y agoGreat stuff!
- boscomutunga 15y agoGreat work , works perfectly in chrome
- ajbatac 15y agoGreat work!