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Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

usecanvas.com

31–40 of 83 posts

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#32

Am super frustrated with how buggy Evernote is, and would be interested in an alternative, but... "We currently only support your browser in read-only mode. Read more." You don't support firefox !? It's not like it's some obscure browser. Also the demo canvas on the landing page being slightly tilted to the left freaks me out.

Here's my obligatory recommendation for Simplenote. It is so good - http://simplenote.com

No affiliation, just a happy user.

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#34
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently firefox is blocked by this, and some other related APIs: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Events/selectio... Once dom.select_events.enabled defaults to true, we'll be able to polyfill most of the other missing APIs.

You built your project on an API that just became a working draft? What do you do when it inevitably changes?

Change their project?

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#35
post #27

Instructure, the company behind Canvas LMS, is a pretty big company, and their software is used by many, many companies/educational institutions. It could be argued that Canvas (the notes app here) is confusingly similar to Canvas LMS wiki pages. I hate being the guy to suggest a name change, but it may be something to consider before you get a lot of traction. I definitely understand the instinctive "fuck no" respon…

"Canvas" is a generic term found in the dictionary. IANAL, but I suspect nobody can claim it as a trademark. I found this about it: > Generic terms are common words or terms, often found in the dictionary, that identify products and services and are not specific to any particular source. It is not possible to register as a trademark a term that is generic for the goods and/or services identified in the application. I…

The operative words there are "for the goods and/or services identified in the application". "Canvas" is not a generic term for a notetaking/documentation platform such as this. "Wiki" probably would be. "Apple" is trademarked if you're using it to describe a computer.

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#36
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently firefox is blocked by this, and some other related APIs: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Events/selectio... Once dom.select_events.enabled defaults to true, we'll be able to polyfill most of the other missing APIs.

You built your project on an API that just became a working draft? What do you do when it inevitably changes?

Happens all the time. Such a terrible thing. I love this article that was posted here a couple days ago: https://blog.runspired.com/2016/03/25/the-chrome-distortion-...

Currently working on a project that only supports Chrome. Turns out it was only using a couple experimental APIs that were easily replaced by small libraries/polyfills. The Chrome blinders are real.

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#37
Your tool looks interesting, congrats on your beta launch! I'd be interested in the technologies you used to build the editor, especially the real-time collaboration part. What libraries are you using or is it something custom built? I'm working on something similar (https://www.nuclino.com) and we've been pretty happy with ProseMirror as the basis of our editor so far. Here's our HN post from a few weeks ago, if you're interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11211241

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#39
We've been beta testing Canvas on the Ember core team for a few months now and it has been awesome.

Markdown is the lingua franca of open source, but until Canvas, none of the online collaboration tools we used understood it. Not only does Canvas support Markdown, it supports programmer-flavored Markdown, with great support for things like checkboxes and code fencing. It's become an indispensable part of how we build open source software online.

Just a few of the ways we use Canvas:

1. Writing feature proposals/documentation side by side with someone

2. Taking collaborative meeting minutes during the weekly core team Google Hangout

3. 12+ of us sitting around a couch, writing an agenda for our quarterly in-person meetings

Canvas is all about small details that continue to delight as you learn it. I think my favorite "hidden" feature is that you can add `.md` to the end of any document URL and it serves up a static Markdown file, making data export incredibly easy.

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#40
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Canvas" is a generic term found in the dictionary. IANAL, but I suspect nobody can claim it as a trademark. I found this about it: > Generic terms are common words or terms, often found in the dictionary, that identify products and services and are not specific to any particular source. It is not possible to register as a trademark a term that is generic for the goods and/or services identified in the application. I…

The operative words there are "for the goods and/or services identified in the application". "Canvas" is not a generic term for a notetaking/documentation platform such as this. "Wiki" probably would be. "Apple" is trademarked if you're using it to describe a computer.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11382259

They identified the services in their trademark application, and it was approved for publication. (edit: Just to further support your point. Canvas isn't a generic word describing their services.)

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