3 ms·

What Steve is building is incredible, but almost more so how he is sharing the journey. He is a very good follow on Twitter, lots of lovely content showing how

What Steve is building is incredible, but almost more so how he is sharing the journey. He is a very good follow on Twitter, lots of lovely content showing how he is solving all sorts of interesting problems. https://twitter.com/steveruizok https://twitter.com/steveruizok You can try the new beta here: https://beta.tldraw.com https://beta.tldraw.com

blitz_skull 4y ago
Can you explain how this is incredible with relation to other products on the market? This seems very similar to various other drawing apps on the market. What's the unique value proposition here?
- rozenmd 4y ago
  From what I've seen, the real-time performance is insane. Dozens of folks on one board with instant updates.
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    Lagged for me on Firefox the more I zoomed out and thus the more elements were on screen.
- alixanderwang 4y ago
  the uniqueness is that it's the highest quality drawing app on the internet. even if on paper other products say they do the same thing, there's a huge difference in quality.
- astroalex 4y ago
  It’s easy to discount a drawing app because it’s been done so many times before. But simply put, this one is just better than the rest. The UI interaction has been thoughtfully refined and never gets in your way. Over time, it’s become the tool I reach for regularly to create sketches. In retrospect, it’s surprising it hasn’t been done this well before!
- steveruizok 4y ago
  Hey! Steve here, founder etc. The biggest value prop is having a canvas that’s “web native”, and so can render anything that a regular website can. Try pasting a codepen link, scratch project, google maps url, gif or video. Almost all of the developers who built on tldraw’s first release ended up building apps that leveraged this; for example, a spatial collection of graphs keeping track of aws cloud processes. https://twitter.com/foodybrian/status/1572784516586172418?s=46&t=t1PhRDZoGMIBrU-BhcqlVg https://twitter.com/foodybrian/status/1572784516586172418?s=... There are trade offs for using the DOM vs. a custom <canvas> renderer, however I think they’re worth it for the types of applications that can be built this way. We’ve also put a ton of thought (and opinions) into the interactions in tldraw. Some of this can sound pretty ridiculous, like rotating your cursor when your rotate a selection, while also counter-rotating the cursor’s shadow to preserve light direction. But especially with this sort of app, you really notice those details when they’re not there. As a product for developers, my hope is that the quality and attention to detail become part of the value proposition! Users certainly notice it.
  - blitz_skull 4y ago
    Hey, very cool to have you chime in here Steve. After looking again, it seems I missed some of the cooler parts of what you've built here. (That tweet is a pretty cool demo video of some of the things you could make). Also—this answer was exactly what I was hoping to be shown. It sounded like tldraw was capable of a lot more than drawing boxes with arrows that moved, but I hadn't figured out exactly what that was--now it all makes sense.
iLoveOncall 4y ago
neonate 4y ago
I went there and the first thing I saw was asking for HN upvotes "we're on hacker news, no direct links but upvotes appreciated" https://twitter.com/steveruizok/status/1598381851055300608 https://twitter.com/steveruizok/status/1598381851055300608
- fakedang 4y ago
  Honestly why is there a stigma against asking for upvotes? He isn't being pushy about it either.

blitz_skull 4y ago

Can you explain how this is incredible with relation to other products on the market? This seems very similar to various other drawing apps on the market. What's the unique value proposition here?

rozenmd 4y ago
From what I've seen, the real-time performance is insane. Dozens of folks on one board with instant updates.
- satvikpendem 4y ago
  Lagged for me on Firefox the more I zoomed out and thus the more elements were on screen.
alixanderwang 4y ago
the uniqueness is that it's the highest quality drawing app on the internet. even if on paper other products say they do the same thing, there's a huge difference in quality.
astroalex 4y ago
It’s easy to discount a drawing app because it’s been done so many times before. But simply put, this one is just better than the rest. The UI interaction has been thoughtfully refined and never gets in your way. Over time, it’s become the tool I reach for regularly to create sketches. In retrospect, it’s surprising it hasn’t been done this well before!
steveruizok 4y ago
Hey! Steve here, founder etc. The biggest value prop is having a canvas that’s “web native”, and so can render anything that a regular website can. Try pasting a codepen link, scratch project, google maps url, gif or video. Almost all of the developers who built on tldraw’s first release ended up building apps that leveraged this; for example, a spatial collection of graphs keeping track of aws cloud processes. https://twitter.com/foodybrian/status/1572784516586172418?s=46&t=t1PhRDZoGMIBrU-BhcqlVg https://twitter.com/foodybrian/status/1572784516586172418?s=... There are trade offs for using the DOM vs. a custom <canvas> renderer, however I think they’re worth it for the types of applications that can be built this way. We’ve also put a ton of thought (and opinions) into the interactions in tldraw. Some of this can sound pretty ridiculous, like rotating your cursor when your rotate a selection, while also counter-rotating the cursor’s shadow to preserve light direction. But especially with this sort of app, you really notice those details when they’re not there. As a product for developers, my hope is that the quality and attention to detail become part of the value proposition! Users certainly notice it.
- blitz_skull 4y ago
  Hey, very cool to have you chime in here Steve. After looking again, it seems I missed some of the cooler parts of what you've built here. (That tweet is a pretty cool demo video of some of the things you could make). Also—this answer was exactly what I was hoping to be shown. It sounded like tldraw was capable of a lot more than drawing boxes with arrows that moved, but I hadn't figured out exactly what that was--now it all makes sense.

iLoveOncall 4y ago

neonate 4y ago

I went there and the first thing I saw was asking for HN upvotes "we're on hacker news, no direct links but upvotes appreciated" https://twitter.com/steveruizok/status/1598381851055300608 https://twitter.com/steveruizok/status/1598381851055300608

fakedang 4y ago
Honestly why is there a stigma against asking for upvotes? He isn't being pushy about it either.