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Show HN: Coscreen.co – a radically different remote collaboration tool

coscreen.co

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Re: Show HN: Coscreen.co – a radically different remote collaboration tool

#55

I'm curious why somebody would start with a machinetosh? Windows is used way more than machinetosh on developer machines. Is it because: 1) Authors don't know the demographics? or 2) They think that Windows users wouldn't pay? (Not true I think) or some other reason?

Thanks for the question. It was honestly a close call and we knew we couldn't do both at the same time (this is a side project). The reasons where: 1. Our personal devices were Macs at the time we started. 2. We felt that the first use case for CoScreen would be agile developers who collaborate with UX designers. The latter seemed to mainly use Macs ( https://austinknight.com/writing/designers-prefer-macs ) while the…

Does that mean you use the JS Screen capture api to capture each and every window separately?

I would’ve thought that’s too much for typical (laptop) cpus but have to admit I never tried this

Re: Show HN: Coscreen.co – a radically different remote collaboration tool

#56
post #4

This looks like an amazing idea executed brilliantly–reminds me of Dropbox in that way. But I've been thinking about it for the last five minutes and I cannot figure out how you guys actually managed to implement this. What sorcery is at the root of this? How do you composite windows from two different machines into a single desktop on macOS?

My hunch is it uses the MacOS accessibility APIs.

Re: Show HN: Coscreen.co – a radically different remote collaboration tool

#57
Some cities have meetups doing coding katas using pair/mob programming. Eg [1]. Perhaps a demo opportunity? Though the mac-only could be an issue.

Fwiw, doing a 3D "desktop" on linux a year ago, I was pleasantly surprised by electron's desktopCapturer for visuals. But multi-source input... X was ok-ish, Wayland not.

[1] https://www.meetup.com/Boston-Software-Crafters/

Re: Show HN: Coscreen.co – a radically different remote collaboration tool

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! It goes through a central server so it can make it through corporate firewalls. This adds latency unfortunately but makes it more reliable for folks behind strange proxies and scales better for >2 users. But in any case, we'll enable P2P connections shortly so it won't go through the server if it doesn't have to, stay tuned. Sign up on our website and we'll let you know once it's out.

If you haven't already, you might consider adding end-to-end encryption, which will make people more comfortable with it going through your servers in the cases where it still needs to. Also, I'd assume you use video compression; keep in mind that encrypted video still reveals some information through sizes, especially if you have some idea of the kinds of applications users typically use.

Absolutely, it's already end to end encrypted but good point on metadata...

Re: Show HN: Coscreen.co – a radically different remote collaboration tool

#59

Some cities have meetups doing coding katas using pair/mob programming. Eg [1]. Perhaps a demo opportunity? Though the mac-only could be an issue. Fwiw, doing a 3D "desktop" on linux a year ago, I was pleasantly surprised by electron's desktopCapturer for visuals. But multi-source input... X was ok-ish, Wayland not. [1] https://www.meetup.com/Boston-Software-Crafters/

Great idea! We'll follow-up.

Also thanks for the hint, we'll use it as a starting point for Linux

Re: Show HN: Coscreen.co – a radically different remote collaboration tool

#60
post #56
post #4

This looks like an amazing idea executed brilliantly–reminds me of Dropbox in that way. But I've been thinking about it for the last five minutes and I cannot figure out how you guys actually managed to implement this. What sorcery is at the root of this? How do you composite windows from two different machines into a single desktop on macOS?

My hunch is it uses the MacOS accessibility APIs.

Bingo ;)
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