This is amazing. I could have really used something simple like this in the past, and really appreciate the ability to use it in the future. Seriously, thank you!
Show HN: I open-sourced my web app alternative to Illustrator
11–20 of 94 posts
Re: Show HN: I open-sourced my web app alternative to Illustrator
#12Not much to say other than: Wow. Great Job.
Re: Show HN: I open-sourced my web app alternative to Illustrator
#13Played around a bit for a few minutes and threw a few of my usually handwritten SVGs at it with disastrous results. View boxes don't seem to work, dashed lines, symbols, any kind of shape reüse in general; groups are ungrouped automatically, but apparently properties defined on groups are not propagated to child elements when ungrouping. And it manages to lock up Firefox and IE completely.
Not terribly impressed so far, but then again, I'm not a designer or an artist and I manage to write SVGs that fail in various renderers due to implementation deficiencies. But those I tested were not even complex or used advanced features.
At the moment I'd guess this is aimed at the most trivial vector graphics possible, i.e. only basic shapes, stroke and fill. It might work for that, but that's well beyond what I use of SVG or Inkscape usually.
Re: Show HN: I open-sourced my web app alternative to Illustrator
#14Awesome! I'm really awful at drawing on my computer. Many failed attempts at trying to learn Illustrator, Gimp, etc. What's really cool about a web app of a drawing app is that you could use all the open source product tour JS libraries to create interactive tutorials... So impressive, thank you!
If you failed at using Illustrator or Gimp effectively, then you didn't try hard enough. Follow video tutorials and try to recreate graphics, in time you'll get better. Ugh, this entire thing is in coffeescript too, now I have to learn coffeescript to make sense of this library.
Coffeescript is way easier to learn than Illustrator.
Re: Show HN: I open-sourced my web app alternative to Illustrator
#15Awesome! I'm really awful at drawing on my computer. Many failed attempts at trying to learn Illustrator, Gimp, etc. What's really cool about a web app of a drawing app is that you could use all the open source product tour JS libraries to create interactive tutorials... So impressive, thank you!
If you failed at using Illustrator or Gimp effectively, then you didn't try hard enough. Follow video tutorials and try to recreate graphics, in time you'll get better. Ugh, this entire thing is in coffeescript too, now I have to learn coffeescript to make sense of this library.
I think the OP is not saying "it was impossible to learn", but "the amount of effort required to learn wasn't worth the return I would get from it". The latter may well be a sensible decision.
And it's great when someone tries to makes the learning process easier, and even better when they open source it.
Re: Show HN: I open-sourced my web app alternative to Illustrator
#16Very cool, thanks.
Re: Show HN: I open-sourced my web app alternative to Illustrator
#17This is pretty awesome!
Re: Show HN: I open-sourced my web app alternative to Illustrator
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you failed at using Illustrator or Gimp effectively, then you didn't try hard enough. Follow video tutorials and try to recreate graphics, in time you'll get better. Ugh, this entire thing is in coffeescript too, now I have to learn coffeescript to make sense of this library.
I think the OP is not saying "it was impossible to learn", but "the amount of effort required to learn wasn't worth the return I would get from it". The latter may well be a sensible decision. And it's great when someone tries to makes the learning process easier, and even better when they open source it.
Yeah, exactly. I also don't have a need to use any of those heavy weight apps more than a few times a year, so every time I go back, I have to start over again from scratch. Something appealing, lightweight, with good tutorials would be such a boon for web developers who don't have time to learn all the subtleties of Illustrator.
Re: Show HN: I open-sourced my web app alternative to Illustrator
#19Played around a bit for a few minutes and threw a few of my usually handwritten SVGs at it with disastrous results. View boxes don't seem to work, dashed lines, symbols, any kind of shape reüse in general; groups are ungrouped automatically, but apparently properties defined on groups are not propagated to child elements when ungrouping. And it manages to lock up Firefox and IE completely. Not terribly impressed so f…
You're right, it still chokes on a lot of SVG features. It is in no way spec-complete. All I can say is hopefully people contribute and it works better for everyone. The version I'm sharing is what I've been able to muster by myself in a year between school and work.
That said, if you opened issues on Github describing how to lock it up in Firefox and IE, and listing those SVG features that it doesn't render, that would be very helpful. Cheers.
Re: Show HN: I open-sourced my web app alternative to Illustrator
#20Didn't work at all for the MediaCrush logo.
