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Show HN: A virtual whiteboard for working or teaching remotely

whiteboardfox.com

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Re: Show HN: A virtual whiteboard for working or teaching remotely

#61

Post by ArcticCelt »

mandor wrote: post #48
wodow wrote: post #14

I love it - works perfectly... but immediately the feature creeper in me has kicked in. Killer features 1. Be able to type in text (any font will do) 2. Drag-and-drop an image to be be able to annotate it over the top (would be excellent design task, e.g. using screenshots of some work-in-progress). 3. Movable objects?

I fully agree, especially for the text (it is hard to write with a mouse!). In addition, basic shapes like line/rectangle/circle would be welcomed (I am terrible at drawing a circle with a mouse).

I got the exact same feeling after using it for 2 seconds. Then watched his video demo and understood why he did it that way.

He did the product with tablet users in mind.

Re: Show HN: A virtual whiteboard for working or teaching remotely

#64

Post by voidlogic »

chrisweekly wrote: post #59

Surprised to learn this is Java and long-polling. (These features scream Meteor / DDP to me.) Regardless, it's a v good start. Thanks for sharing!

I agree this is a great start. This is a good example of how solid implementation is almost always much more important then "newer/better technologies".

Its a bit of a tangent, but it makes me think how "feature focused" people are when hiring, do you know x/y/z with domain experience in q?

The right questions are, is this candidate a intelligent, a fast learner, reliable, have a track record of producing?

Re: Show HN: A virtual whiteboard for working or teaching remotely

#67

Post by MarkMc »

chrisweekly wrote: post #59

Surprised to learn this is Java and long-polling. (These features scream Meteor / DDP to me.) Regardless, it's a v good start. Thanks for sharing!

Yes the Java async messaging stuff required some pretty deep understanding, especially ironing out a couple of deadlock bugs (ironically drawing a diagram in whiteboard fox helped me understand the deadlocks: https://s1.whiteboardfox.com/s/420876221780898a.png)

I would have much preferred a solid framework or library. Maybe I didn't spend enough time researching the alternatives to writing it myself.

But then again I wonder if a library would have had the low-level flexibility I needed. For example, I found that one of the most frustrating things when using whiteboard fox was that your internet connection would go down and you wouldn't know about it. So you would not realise that there was a problem and think that the other person had simply stopped drawing. My solution was to add a 5-second heartbeat so that the browser could display a 'disconnected' message when it didn't get the heartbeat. Would a high-level library allow me the option of such a heartbeat?

Re: Show HN: A virtual whiteboard for working or teaching remotely

#68

Post by divyahansg »

wodow wrote: post #14

I love it - works perfectly... but immediately the feature creeper in me has kicked in. Killer features 1. Be able to type in text (any font will do) 2. Drag-and-drop an image to be be able to annotate it over the top (would be excellent design task, e.g. using screenshots of some work-in-progress). 3. Movable objects?

A similar site I built (http://stoodle.org) supports these three features in addition to group voice conferencing through Twilio.
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