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Infinite Canvas

infinitecanvas.tools

31–40 of 43 posts

Re: Infinite Canvas

#31
post #24

"We think spatially" — this is true! So why do most of our apps and operating systems insist on ignoring that and dump stuff on us in a programmer-convenient way? The Mac desktop remembers icon/folder positions — and people love it! That's why it's used for so many things and why you so often see unbelievably busy/cluttered desktops. So why can't other apps and OSs do the same? Windows insists on losing my desktop ar…

Used Macs back in mid/late 80s, and to this day that feature, that icons stay where you put them, is the part I miss the most. Before 95, Windows seemed like just a glorified program-launcher, but when 95 took on that icons-stay -put feature, that's when I decided Windows might just be ok after all.

It makes sense, at a deep level in our brains, that we apprehend our world spatially, that we'd be adapted to instant recognition of landscapes. Other people would look at my Mac folders and ask "how can you find anything?" For me, it was bliss. I could see without having to read any path names exactly where I was, because each folder's icons had a unique sort of constellation. If I needed to find someplace else, unconscious brain mechanisms could tell me it's that way, i.e. behind whichever icon. London cabbies are known to have maps of the entire city in their minds, and that's what it felt like. Some of the same people that thought my icon arrangements were crazy had their own constellations that didn't make sense to me. It was a much more personal experience.

So of course not long after trying to get comfortable with W95, it came as a shock when I discovered previously tamed territory was suddenly in disarray. Suddenly I had to read O(n) icon names to find what was sought, rather than just knowing by spatial arrangement which was the right one. And as I tried to establish and expand order, it became apparent this was just a kind of whack-a-mole, due to a very poor implementation that could only retain 400 positions at most. There were many other reasons I eventually abandoned Windows, but this was one of the first deep aggravations with it.

Re: Infinite Canvas

#33

I don't understand the value proposition of ZUI. Yes, I think visually, but I tend to remember things as atoms, or as narratives. An atom might be "CBC means Cipher Block Chaining", a narrative might be, "you take your plaintext and split it into blocks, then you take your IV and XOR it with your first block, then you XOR block n with the block n-1". I'm not sure that a graph data structure adds value. What's the val…

How do you find your way around your home town? The brain's ability to handle that problem is so deep, most people don't even notice. It's taken for granted, like breathing.

Graphic representation can plug into that brain system. We all want tools that get out of the way and enable us to focus on the problem at hand, to help establish the much desired state of flow - nobody (I know, anyway) likes to continuously put the business problem on pause to navigate some tool's odd conceptualization of the work space.

At least for some users, the value-add is smoother work flow.

Re: Infinite Canvas

#35

It would be awesome if someone actually built an infinite canvas application that didn't run on the browser, so that you could actually use it effectively. Currently, the majority of infinite canvas applications begin to noticeably lag and stutter after a while, and start to have syncing inconsistencies especially in their "multiplayer" mode.

Lol. Their key example is Figma…which is, effectively, a better knockoff of the native Sketch mac desktop app. It had that infinite canvas first.

“Knockoff” is not giving Figma its due credit. People loved Sketch, and now everyone in product design is using Figma. You think that happened by Figma being a knockoff?

Re: Infinite Canvas

#36

I don't understand the value proposition of ZUI. Yes, I think visually, but I tend to remember things as atoms, or as narratives. An atom might be "CBC means Cipher Block Chaining", a narrative might be, "you take your plaintext and split it into blocks, then you take your IV and XOR it with your first block, then you XOR block n with the block n-1". I'm not sure that a graph data structure adds value. What's the val…

How do you find your way around your home town? The brain's ability to handle that problem is so deep, most people don't even notice. It's taken for granted, like breathing. Graphic representation can plug into that brain system. We all want tools that get out of the way and enable us to focus on the problem at hand, to help establish the much desired state of flow - nobody (I know, anyway) likes to continuously put…

> How do you find your way around your home town?

Extremely poorly? I 100% notice my lack of ability to navigate without aid. If I was to guess the representation in my head, it'd be a node graph, which you'd think would be spatial, but doesn't have to be, in my case it isn't. Intersections are just connected to other intersections, that's all I seemingly know: I can't even reasonably predict how far I am along a road!

All of this to somewhat say, the "some" in "At least for some users" is doing overtime: I think the answer isn't an infinite canvas, but somewhere in the facts of what an infinite canvas offers us over traditional forms: extreme link-ability between things, and organization of those links

Re: Infinite Canvas

#38

It would be awesome if someone actually built an infinite canvas application that didn't run on the browser, so that you could actually use it effectively. Currently, the majority of infinite canvas applications begin to noticeably lag and stutter after a while, and start to have syncing inconsistencies especially in their "multiplayer" mode.

obsidian released it

Re: Infinite Canvas

#39

It would be awesome if someone actually built an infinite canvas application that didn't run on the browser, so that you could actually use it effectively. Currently, the majority of infinite canvas applications begin to noticeably lag and stutter after a while, and start to have syncing inconsistencies especially in their "multiplayer" mode.

A little tangential to this but my favorite drawing program for sketching, Mischief, did this perfectly for art. Sadly the company shutdown and there are no more updates.

Re: Infinite Canvas

#40
Sigh, no self-hosted alternatives? Why is so difficult to offer a payed self-hosted license?

Obsidian comes close, but it doesn't offer the full drawing toolbox like Miro.

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