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Ask HN: What collaborative whiteboard are you using?

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Re: Ask HN: What collaborative whiteboard are you using?

#161
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checkout doodledocs.com -- no account creation needed, front-end app only (it doesn't always work behind corporate wifi) It's nowhere near perfect, but it's open source and I'm open to any collaboration on it for fun (even a complete rewrite, I'm not a fan of EmberJS. I explored EmberJS with it). I'm currently noticing an eraser bug when you are in draw mode and they are in eraser mode (d'oh). I didn't know Jamboard…

It’s not exactly mobile friendly. You should direct mobile users to use this on their desktop with some kind of alert.

That is a really good tip! Thanks :)

Re: Ask HN: What collaborative whiteboard are you using?

#162
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I keep instinctively trying to hit Ctrl+Z to undo, which doesn't work I've only tested on Mac, and Cmd+Z works. What platform are you on? Sandstorm is a maybe, but we're doing great on a $7/mo Heroku instance. :-)

> What platform are you on? Firefox on Linux.

Figured it out: I was using 'meta' instead of 'mod'. Should be fixed, thanks for the report!

Re: Ask HN: What collaborative whiteboard are you using?

#163
post #2

I love https://excalidraw.com Christopher Chedeau did a recent talk on nice challenges they had building it in the open https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fix2-SynPGE I want to build a plugin for Figma to embed Excalidraw inside Figma as I use Figma for all my design work already.

Looks great! The UI is intuitive and so well laid out.

Re: Ask HN: What collaborative whiteboard are you using?

#164
I have tried few of them, but what I find most infuriating is the lack of keyboard shortcuts.

Usually they support only C+z for undo.

Switching between pen and eraser by having to actually click an icon is fine on iPad but it drives me up the wall when I am using wacom tablet and keyboard.

Does anyone know application that supports keyboard shortcuts?

Re: Ask HN: What collaborative whiteboard are you using?

#165
post #10

I use a real whiteboard on my wall in shot of the camera

I'm surprised I had to scroll down so far to see this. You could distribute individual whiteboards to every engineer, and even have a dedicated webcam/tripod setup, for next to nothing. It's not "collaborative" in the sense that remote people can erase stuff on your board, but, I don't think that's a big deal. The "erase API" just becomes "Hey, @iso1631, why don't we get rid of X and replace it with Y?" I suppose if…

Normally when we whiteboard we just have one person at the controls anyway

Re: Ask HN: What collaborative whiteboard are you using?

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you no longer have to connect via wire. you can remote the ipad screen via quicktime, over LAN.

Really? I use QuickTime for screen recording all the time, I've never been able to do it over LAN. Just tried it now and the iPad only shows up as a video source when plugged in. Are you sure you're not thinking of SideCar?

maybe we're both right.

i was wrong, you can't connect directly over LAN to an iPad. i was thinking of a different use case with ATV -- somewhere around 2018 you could install MDM profiles over LAN instead of USB.

but you can still do it wirelessly, if you have an ATV. use airplay to project the iPad screen to the ATV. pair your mac with the ATV. after pairing, your mac can record over LAN from the ATV, where you are projecting your iPad. tried it just now and it works with the slight deficit that you get a TV-sized image, with borders, instead of the iPad-sized image.

from Apple docs, it seems like any generation ATV will work, so if you're doing this just for iPad screen sharing, it may still be worth the effort if you pick up a 3rd gen ATV for $30 on ebay. some apple cables cost more than that!

Re: Ask HN: What collaborative whiteboard are you using?

#167
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If using Google Meet (we do internally): 1) ditto 2) join meeting from ipad (in addition to camera/mic device) 3) present screen from ipad Then you can use any pencil app you like. I use one called "Coloring" that my kid uses. It's really simple and doesn't get in the way. I presume the same would work for any other videoconf tool, eg zoom. The benefit over your method is that you still have the additional headshot v…

the jam app used to be able to join google meets natively but when i checked most recently it appears they removed that feature :( strong agree on having an independent device for whiteboarding so you can see heads is more important than the collaborative part, if you had to pick one. so much context is provided in seeing if heads are nodding or looking confused

just looked into this and can confirm, jam cannot join a meet "natively".

but it is close enough. just use the google meet app from the iPad, and share the iPad screen from within Meet. it's the method i outlined, just with the jam app instead of 'Coloring'.

even without google meet on the iPad, the share-to-yourself and then share screen is unnecessary. create a new jam, join that jam from laptop and iPad, and share the jam from your laptop. this seems easier to me, but ymmv. https://allthings.how/how-to-use-jamboard-in-google-meet/

should also work with any other videoconf app. i assume they all allow screen share.

i really enjoy this method much better, because now in Catalina the screen recording permission is a distinct capability. I only enable that for Chrome when I explicitly need to share the screen. Setting those kinds of capabilities is not automatable, so it's a self-imposed annoyance, but worth it for the security gain. People really underappreciate the improved security of Catalina, perhaps justifiably so due to the other craptasticness of it. When you enable this in prefs, it says you have to restart chrome for it to take effect. However, you don't. The permission takes effect dynamically. Probably because each tab is a new process in Chrome, so it is in effect "restarting".

for vc apps that have their own app, this is great compartmentalization for the screen recording permission. for vc that runs in the browser, the tradeoff is you have to give the entire browser screen recording permission. this is too vast of a permission. of course with a native app you then have the zoom-malware problem. sigh.

Re: Ask HN: What collaborative whiteboard are you using?

#168
We've been LOVING Sprink (trysprink.com) and it's free! Compared to Miro which we previously used, the interface was much easier for our team. Plus there's no setup required which is a huge bonus when you want to quickly share a board and still video/audio call.

Re: Ask HN: What collaborative whiteboard are you using?

#169

Our team's have been using Miro for this kind of collaboration. I was surprised that it felt better than using a whiteboard in person, because the cost of changing the already drawn boxes and arrows went way down. For more technical whiteboards, I've been using excalidraw. I like presenting the "drawn" look to help imply that this is an unfinished idea and we're sketching the concepts out.

Miro works great for us as well.

It's particularly good that multiple people can edit at the same time. It's pretty fast and we reuse the notes across sessions.

Re: Ask HN: What collaborative whiteboard are you using?

#170
OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) - Provides the screens/windows to the conf call as well as your camera shot.

Gromit-MPX - Allows drawing overtop whatever screen/window you'd like.

Wacom Intuous - Much nicer to draw with than a mouse or finger.

https://obsproject.com/

https://github.com/bk138/gromit-mpx

https://www.wacom.com/en-us/products/pen-tablets/wacom-intuo...

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