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Gravit – Open-source design tool
- adamjs 12y agoHas a nice UI (albeit cloned from Photoshop). Save/Export doesn't seem to work on my machine (Chrome 37, Mac OSX). Would be nice to see some kind of SVG export instead of raster formats.
- boomskats 12y agoThere's an intro to the app on their blog. Sounds like they were going for Freehand/Fireworks rather than Photoshop :) All saving also disabled for me, guessing the back end isn't quite there yet.
- diminish 12y agoRandom thoughts; (1) A classic drawing tool made slick, beautiful. (2) Flash is not needed for this type of work at all, thanks to HTML5 (3) It's fast enough (4) View source shows nothing, which means all the UI view generation functionality has moved inside JS.
- joshribakoff 12y ago(2) Maybe it was faster for him to build that way, due to experience, etc.. (3) strawman argument, perhaps he chose his technologies for other reasons besides premature optimization. You're essentially accusing him of making a design mistake IMO. (4) The fact that right click is disabled doesn't tell us anything about the software architecture, your statement reads as if its a critique.
- boomskats 12y agoI didn't think he was criticising anything.
- diminish 12y agoI was indeed praising him. 2) he used html/js, and i'm glad flash isn't needed to make such a tool 3) i was happy it's fast enough. 4)no u misunderstood; i pressed ctrl+u and have seen the source code, indeed. it's an empty body with few JS files. I find it remarkable as HTML's document centric approach with viewable document structure disappeared from view and moved into the JS files.
- andrea_s 12y agoWhat does right click have to do with anything? The HTML source code for the page is 25 lines long and contains no markup at all. Which is not a critique, of course :)
- ChrisClark 12y agoWow, everything he said was actually praise or just neutral comments. You are trying to argue about something that doesn't exist.
- hliyan 12y agoThat loaded much faster than expected. I'd very much like a peek at the code (could not find a link to Github or Google Code).
- sputnik27 12y agohttps://github.com/quasado/gravit https://github.com/quasado/gravit Found on http://gravit.io/ http://gravit.io/, upper right corner.
- joelthelion 12y agoThis may be the first time I try a web app that is as snappy as a desktop one. Congratulations! What front-end frameworks/technologies did you use?
- eskimobloood 12y agoAccording to the bower file [1] they only use jquery [1] https://github.com/quasado/gravit/blob/master/bower.json https://github.com/quasado/gravit/blob/master/bower.json
- hliyan 12y agoA cursory glace at the editor code does not reveal any extensive jQuery use (in fact, I didn't notice any). I've never seen a jQuery-heavy app go quite this fast.
- Void_ 12y agoI found the opposite opening a random file: https://github.com/quasado/gravit/blob/master/src/gravit/component/colorpanel.js#L230 https://github.com/quasado/gravit/blob/master/src/gravit/com...
- aragot 12y ago+1 on making it iPad-compatible and making the demo without subscription. And snappy webapps in the iPad are rare.
- pierrec 12y agoAlso from the bower file, the magic that turns it from a web app into a standalone app is node-webkit [1]. This kind of tool is really becoming one of the best options for creating desktop applications, especially considering how powerful the browsers' devtools have become. It's having like a GUI designer and a debugger rolled up into one. [1]: https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit
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- jarek-foksa 12y agoIt's worth noting that Gravit.io is a JavaScript rewrite of Stagestack project [1] which was an attempt to create commercial clone of Macromedia FreeHand from scratch [2]. Stagestack project failed due to lack of funding from FreeHand community. [1] http://www.stagestack.com/ http://www.stagestack.com/ [2] http://www.freehandforum.org/news.html http://www.freehandforum.org/news.html
- freework 12y ago... but Joel Spolsky said you should never rewrite code ever ever ever...
- coldtea 12y agoWhereas what Joel said is debatable, this snark comment is wrong on so many leves it's funny... 1) Joel was talking on the context of a software business -- if you have working code it can be detrimental to business to do a rewrite from scratch, it will take you years, you will leave stuff off, piss off your customers, lose ground to the competition etc. It's not like Gravit.io has that kind of "business reasons" at this moment (this is their initial version offering), so his reasons do not apply to it. 2) Gravit.io is a port of a project to another language. This is not a rewrite -- much less a "rewrite from scratch". Again, Joel's reasons do not apply to the situation.
- dfurlong 12y agoThis is not open source! this is free software
- reinhardt1053 12y agoSource code: https://github.com/quasado/gravit https://github.com/quasado/gravit
- aaron987 12y agoNice work! It might be cool to allow people to share designs. So if I was creating a web page, I could browse through web pages other people have created and import one, then use that as a foundation for my own design. At any rate, this is pretty cool.
- thewarrior 12y agoHas anyone here manage to figure out the secrets behind this apps blazing fast performance ?
- ksherlock 12y agohttps://github.com/quasado/gravit https://github.com/quasado/gravit
- moron4hire 12y agoLoad performance is mostly due to the few number of files that are being included, though minification also helps. Application performance is typical of modern, hand-coded JS. Or rather, I should say, the only reason I can see for why people tolerate bloated frameworks is because they've just come to expect JS to be slow. There is a reason some of us insist on sticking to vanilla JS. It's not because we're crotchety, old, greybeards. We wouldn't be touching JS at all if that were the case. It appears they might also be using layered canvases to render different parts of the workspace that update at different rates. So that prevents them from having to redraw the checkered background every time you move the drawing. And it prevents them from having to redraw the existing drawing every time you add a new element and are still adjusting it. Pretty standard techniques for anyone with experience working with Canvas, actually.
- coldtea 12y agoJS is very fast in modern browsers. It blows things like Python and PHP out of the water, it competes with Go, and with asm.js (or sometimes without) it can be like merely 2x slower than C. The main reason most web apps don't also feel very fast is not "DOM manipulation" or things that happen inside the page, is that they also do AJAX network calls and that adds huge latencies. This app, judging the functionality, does everything inside the VM (no need to do AJAX calls for a drawing app), so can offer the full speed JS can do.
- baltcode 12y agoI couldn't click on the Save item in the File menu.
- zo1 12y agoIt's a demo...
- iamleppert 12y agoThis is awesome!! Played around with it for awhile. Very snappy, great UI. Very functional! Well done.
- overgard 12y agoYou might consider overriding the delete/backspace button. I tried to delete a spline and ended up back on hacker news :-)
- ch0wn 12y agoIt's definitely one of those web apps where I'd be totally fine with a `window.onbeforeunload` popup asking me whether I really want to leave.
- clarry 12y agoI came expecting a free alternative to something like AutoCAD. Instead I got a blank page, and after reloading with JS enabled, a core dump from a browser that ran out of memory. For a snappy drawing program, native code remains the way to go.
- Igglyboo 12y agoI disagree, this is really fast and totally rivals a native app. What are you computer specs and what browser are you using?
- clarry 12y agoDo you disagree with the core dump on my hard drive? Firefox 31 ESR, Atom N450, 1G of RAM. Gimp for instance runs pretty smooth (although there are much faster still options if you don't need all the features); I use it a lot.
- Igglyboo 12y agoI disagree with your statement that native code is the way to go for snappy drawing apps, maybe for low end hardware like what you're using but for more powerful hardware there is no downside.
- coldtea 12y ago>Do you disagree with the core dump on my hard drive? No, he and I disagree that your experience is typical for everybody. Most people in this thread (including me) praised this for its quick loading, snapiness and speed. Perhaps "Atom" and "1GB of RAM" doesn't cuts it for this kind of in-browser app, despite GIMP (a native app) running "pretty smooth). It makes sense if this has a minimum memory use requirement -- below which you can't run it at all because you don't have enough space that it needs to load, and after which you're OK and it's fast. That said, people have run it on their iPads, and it's extremely snappy there too. I'm also not sure the core dump was because of "out of memory". How about some glitch with your graphics card driver and the canvas renderer (which is not uncommon)?
- jng 12y agoCongrats on the great job. Nobody would raise an eyebrow for this work if it were not browser-based. Does this say something about the state of web apps?
- kudu 12y agoJust wondering, why is the title of this submission allowed to remain as "Gravit - Open-source design tool"? Under HN's dogmatic rules, shouldn't it be renamed to just "Gravit"?
- nightpool 12y agoWhile this was once a problem, your information is like 6 months out of date. The mods have been pretty good at balancing "informative" and "close to the original submission". pg even said that the way the rules were being interpreted weren't the way they were originally intended.
- nulldata 12y agoI'm impressed with the responsiveness on the iPad, it feels like a native app!
- Pxtl 12y agoSame on n7. Developer should phonegap this thing and drum up some revenue on the app stores, OSS or not.
- djtriptych 12y agoThis is very good. I think it's designed to be an Adobe Fireworks replacement. Great stuff!
- _delirium 12y agoFor offline usage, has anyone used both Gravit and Inkscape for any significant period of time, and can comment on pros/cons? This might be a dumb question if they don't really occupy the same space. But naively it seems to me like they overlap somewhat, and maybe I should move some of what I currently do in Inkscape to Gravit? (I'm not all that proficient in Inkscape, and at first usage Gravit seems simpler.)
- nottombrown 12y agoThis is great. I could see it replacing much of my Illustrator work.
- theoutlander 12y agoNice interface. I'm trying to get better at very quickly implementing UI's from the ground up (also moving past bootstrap/foundation). What was your approach to making this interface? Did you use a pre-processor? Did you modify an existing framework or generate css output from a photoshop mockup? Thanks.
- webwanderings 12y agoI was looking for something similar frantically the other day when I couldn't use pixlr (it needs flash and my laptop was very old). But, how do I insert an image from my computer as the layer?
- microcolonel 12y agoThis is kinda cool, and might help out the web crowd which is working with Chrome OS at the moment.(I'm writing this comment on a Chromebook right now) Why anyone would use this rather than inkscape on either Linux or Windows, however, is beyond me.
- hawleyal 12y agoTrash buttons don't work.
- wydyl 12y agoFantastic...have a similar initiative though of a little different flavor. Will share soon. All the best