3 ms·

Not sure what you are comparing this against? --- First of all it's a free, open tool, MIT license, that is also hosted for free. It loads instantly without

by dgb23 5y ago

Not sure what you are comparing this against? --- First of all it's a free, open tool, MIT license, that is also hosted for free. It loads instantly without an installation step. You just type in the URL and it works. It's not a "productivity program" specifically as illustrated in the article. The design is very simple, intuitive and deliberately minimalist, while it does quite a bunch of subtle things under the hood that harmonize with the overall goal of the program. --- Now there may have been tools kind of like this in the 90's. Not aware of any of them from the top of my head.

michaelt 5y ago
I assume kazinator means: In Office 95, you click the Excel icon and it opens to a blank document with no login or registration or anything like that. As did drawing software, 3D modelling software, and so on. Of course, arguably one did have to pay for it and install it - but that was a one-off thing.
- samstave 5y ago
  Dear god - anyone here have to setup licensing servers for high-end 3D software from the past, like Softimage or Alias|Wavefront - those were a bitch, and if you lost connection to the licensing server, you couldnt run the program.
- bayindirh 5y ago
  Excalidraw is akin to dia, but on the web. Also, it's more targeted and polished it seems, and that's nice.
- BjoernKW 5y ago
  People might be seeing this through slightly rose-tinted glasses. Yes, you could use Excel 95 by just double-clicking on an icon. However, not only did you have to buy and install the software, which back in the day often meant going to an actual brick-and-mortar store to purchase a shrink-wrapped box labelled "Office 95", but it even required buying a specific type of computer with a specific operating system first. In this specific case, that doesn't even take into account Microsoft's shady tactics of strong-arming vendors and OEMs into exclusively shipping Microsoft software with their products. So, arguably, the barrier to entry still was a lot higher than with even the most obnoxious growth hacking tactics we see in many SaaS products today. That said, I absolutely love the way Excalidraw are "onboarding" users. It's just worth remembering that not everything went downhill with SaaS products (in fact, quite the opposite) and not everything was better "back in the day".
  - yen223 5y ago
    Shrink-wrapped software back then weren't cheap too, costing hundreds if not thousands of dollars per copy.
peterkelly 5y ago
Parent post was not criticizing Excalidraw, but rather highlighting problems with other apps that are so prevalent today. They are saying that Excalidraw is great in comparison to apps that have those bad features, in other words "this is like the good old days".
- ctvo 5y ago
  And what were those tools in the good ole days that had the features enumerated by the parent? Primarily free, open source, hosted, instant open, local storage along with the usability? Excalidraw feels like a product of this time, and demonstrates some of the things we all enjoy about the web as an ecosystem. People compare it to some yesteryear product because of its purposeful feature set and look / feel, but name something from back then.
  - peterkelly 5y ago
    > but name something from back then You insert the CD, install the software, and then it's ready to use. That's it. To reiterate the quote from the article the GP mentioned: > There's no onboarding. No signup. No confirmation email. No OAuth. You're just in the product.
  - kazinator 5y ago
    Nothing is being contrasted in my comment. The software in question has the above features, and it has "no onboarding. No signup. No confirmation email. No OAuth." It's just sad that you even have to have that in your checklist of things nowadays. Like it's amazing when software doesn't ask you to make another damned online account and just lets you use it. (And it's good that this doesn't, yay.) Hosted is a negative feature to me (other than for trying the software). You don't control the software installation. Tomorrow you could wake up and try to continue your work, to discover that some feature is missing you were depending on, or new bugs are happening that weren't there and so on. Or your local storage is borked because it's not being read correctly by the newly installed code. It's good if something is hosted for trying out, but you want it to be locally installable so you and your team can depend on it, and evaluate updates before rolling them out, and roll back bad updates. "Has local storage" is another thing that is sad to see as having to tick off a checklist.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by dgb23 5y ago

michaelt 5y ago

I assume kazinator means: In Office 95, you click the Excel icon and it opens to a blank document with no login or registration or anything like that. As did drawing software, 3D modelling software, and so on. Of course, arguably one did have to pay for it and install it - but that was a one-off thing.

samstave 5y ago
Dear god - anyone here have to setup licensing servers for high-end 3D software from the past, like Softimage or Alias|Wavefront - those were a bitch, and if you lost connection to the licensing server, you couldnt run the program.
bayindirh 5y ago
Excalidraw is akin to dia, but on the web. Also, it's more targeted and polished it seems, and that's nice.
BjoernKW 5y ago
People might be seeing this through slightly rose-tinted glasses. Yes, you could use Excel 95 by just double-clicking on an icon. However, not only did you have to buy and install the software, which back in the day often meant going to an actual brick-and-mortar store to purchase a shrink-wrapped box labelled "Office 95", but it even required buying a specific type of computer with a specific operating system first. In this specific case, that doesn't even take into account Microsoft's shady tactics of strong-arming vendors and OEMs into exclusively shipping Microsoft software with their products. So, arguably, the barrier to entry still was a lot higher than with even the most obnoxious growth hacking tactics we see in many SaaS products today. That said, I absolutely love the way Excalidraw are "onboarding" users. It's just worth remembering that not everything went downhill with SaaS products (in fact, quite the opposite) and not everything was better "back in the day".
- yen223 5y ago
  Shrink-wrapped software back then weren't cheap too, costing hundreds if not thousands of dollars per copy.

peterkelly 5y ago

Parent post was not criticizing Excalidraw, but rather highlighting problems with other apps that are so prevalent today. They are saying that Excalidraw is great in comparison to apps that have those bad features, in other words "this is like the good old days".

ctvo 5y ago
And what were those tools in the good ole days that had the features enumerated by the parent? Primarily free, open source, hosted, instant open, local storage along with the usability? Excalidraw feels like a product of this time, and demonstrates some of the things we all enjoy about the web as an ecosystem. People compare it to some yesteryear product because of its purposeful feature set and look / feel, but name something from back then.
- peterkelly 5y ago
  > but name something from back then You insert the CD, install the software, and then it's ready to use. That's it. To reiterate the quote from the article the GP mentioned: > There's no onboarding. No signup. No confirmation email. No OAuth. You're just in the product.
- kazinator 5y ago
  Nothing is being contrasted in my comment. The software in question has the above features, and it has "no onboarding. No signup. No confirmation email. No OAuth." It's just sad that you even have to have that in your checklist of things nowadays. Like it's amazing when software doesn't ask you to make another damned online account and just lets you use it. (And it's good that this doesn't, yay.) Hosted is a negative feature to me (other than for trying the software). You don't control the software installation. Tomorrow you could wake up and try to continue your work, to discover that some feature is missing you were depending on, or new bugs are happening that weren't there and so on. Or your local storage is borked because it's not being read correctly by the newly installed code. It's good if something is hosted for trying out, but you want it to be locally installable so you and your team can depend on it, and evaluate updates before rolling them out, and roll back bad updates. "Has local storage" is another thing that is sad to see as having to tick off a checklist.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]