Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds • Hacker News Board

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#11

Post by teich » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 6:18 PM UTC

jaymoorthi wrote: post #7

It feels a lot like Hackpad, which is great. One of the main issues we had with Hackpad, though, was that the collaborative editing led to it being used for note-taking with third-parties, and it was really easy to inadvertently share a document by putting it into a space that was public or shared. What are your plans with Canvas to make sharing easy within a team, and but less error prone for sharing outside?

Yes, giving you some better controls is on the list. love to hear more about your specific needs - drop me an email oren@usecanvas

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#12

Post by moron4hire » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 6:24 PM UTC

ofbriggs wrote: post #10

polymeris wrote: post #5

Am super frustrated with how buggy Evernote is, and would be interested in an alternative, but... "We currently only support your browser in read-only mode. Read more." You don't support firefox !? It's not like it's some obscure browser. Also the demo canvas on the landing page being slightly tilted to the left freaks me out.

Currently firefox is blocked by this, and some other related APIs: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Events/selectio... Once dom.select_events.enabled defaults to true, we'll be able to polyfill most of the other missing APIs.

I can think of a way to hack it in, and I'm open for consulting contracts.

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#13

Post by elcapitan » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 6:25 PM UTC

From the name I expected some kind of whiteboard-drawing tool and was a bit disappointed, but probably only because I read about similar tools on another thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11381885).

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#14

Post by gh-lfneu28 » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 6:25 PM UTC

wnevets wrote: post #8

This is going to sound silly but the crooked box at the bottom of the home page is so off putting.

I concur, it feels design-y in the bad sense and makes me want to close the page asap.

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#15

Post by wilde » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 6:26 PM UTC

If their team is wondering why mobile users are bouncing, it's because it takes 20s for the page to render anything:

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/160329_KP_15JS/

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#16

Post by fluxquanta » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 6:28 PM UTC

wnevets wrote: post #8

This is going to sound silly but the crooked box at the bottom of the home page is so off putting.

It was hard for me to get past "we need a workbench for our [lightbulb]", but that crooked box sealed the deal.

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#17

Post by soffes » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 6:29 PM UTC

wnevets wrote: post #8

This is going to sound silly but the crooked box at the bottom of the home page is so off putting.

Hah. Fair.

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#18

Post by spdustin » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 6:33 PM UTC

Instructure, the company behind Canvas LMS, is a pretty big company, and their software is used by many, many companies/educational institutions.

It could be argued that Canvas (the notes app here) is confusingly similar to Canvas LMS wiki pages. I hate being the guy to suggest a name change, but it may be something to consider before you get a lot of traction. I definitely understand the instinctive "fuck no" response to the suggestion that you change the name of something you clearly poured your heart and soul into, so please don't shoot the messenger here. Just wanted to bring it to your attention, in case you weren't aware.

EDIT BELOW:

Well, I'm pleased to say that this company did at least some kind of due diligence in this case. They applied for and received a trademark for the Service Mark (with the Standard Character Mark type) "CANVAS", covering "software as a service (SaaS) services featuring software used to allow collaboration between users for sharing information; software as a service (SaaS) services featuring software to create, structure, edit, access, integrate, manage, interpret and synchronize documents, content and data between users".

http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86642511&caseType=SERIAL_N...

So, "Canvas Labs, Inc.", bravo!

Additional edit below:

Trademark was approved on March 26, 2016 to be published on May 3, 2016.

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#19

Post by jspiral » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 6:44 PM UTC

spdustin wrote: post #18

Instructure, the company behind Canvas LMS, is a pretty big company, and their software is used by many, many companies/educational institutions. It could be argued that Canvas (the notes app here) is confusingly similar to Canvas LMS wiki pages. I hate being the guy to suggest a name change, but it may be something to consider before you get a lot of traction. I definitely understand the instinctive "fuck no" respon…

Yes, I thought this was going to be a repurposing of something in the LMS

Re: Canvas: Notes for teams of nerds

#20

Post by kuschku » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 6:44 PM UTC

ofbriggs wrote: post #10

polymeris wrote: post #5

Am super frustrated with how buggy Evernote is, and would be interested in an alternative, but... "We currently only support your browser in read-only mode. Read more." You don't support firefox !? It's not like it's some obscure browser. Also the demo canvas on the landing page being slightly tilted to the left freaks me out.

Currently firefox is blocked by this, and some other related APIs: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Events/selectio... Once dom.select_events.enabled defaults to true, we'll be able to polyfill most of the other missing APIs.

You built your project on an API that just became a working draft?

What do you do when it inevitably changes?