

Show HN: Jotleaf is a free-form, collaborative canvas for web content - bdr
http://www.jotleaf.com/

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simonsarris
I upvoted this because I upvote every genuine Show HN, but I think you need to
give more compelling reasons to use the product over what I (and I'm sure
others) are already using.

In what ways is this more useful than the Google Drawings already in Google
Drive? Google drawings lets you:

* Edit drawings online in real time with anyone you choose, and invite others to view your edits in real time.

* Chat with others who are editing your drawing, from within the drawings editor.

* Publish drawings online to the world as images, or download them in standard formats.

* Insert text, shapes, arrows, scribbles, and images from your hard drive or from the Web.

* Lay out drawings precisely with alignment guides, snap to grid, and auto distribution.

* Insert drawings into other Google documents, spreadsheets, or presentations using the web clipboard, then tweak them inline.

Why would I use Jotleaf instead?

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bdr
Thanks for your feedback! There are three categories of usage for an app like
this. The first is document creation, where you're trying to produce some
content to use somewhere else. Google Drawings is better at this one than
Jotleaf. And it shows in their design, which looks and feels like an Office
app. The second is social. You mentioned chat. This has been the biggest
driver of Jotleaf usage so far, and I think we're better at it. People make a
Jotleaf for a group of friends, and follow each other around in realtime,
creating different spaces, and talking to each other freely. It's like a
spatial chatroom, or a playground. Finally, there's creating destination
pages, and we're better at that too. You can create a beautiful Jotleaf and
send people a link to it. With the Drawings interface, I don't see that
happening. We've tried hard to make your work look good.

I'm curious: you've mentioned a lot of features of Google Drawings. What do
you actually use it for?

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smalter
Awesome job, Andrew. It's very cool what you've built.

A few nits:

\- I didn't realize "Try It Now" was a link to play with the product without
signing up. This might do better as a button.

\- I think the great Jotleafs that people have created really show the
potential of the product and provide the inspiration. It would be great to put
that stuff at the forefront a bit like you've done with Your World of Text
(the homepage is a canvas).

~~~
8ig8
> I didn't realize "Try It Now" was a link to play with the product without
> signing up. This might do better as a button.

Same here. I was about to _complain_ about the sign up requirement to demo the
project. I'm glad I saw your comment. I agree a button would make the link
much more obvious.

~~~
Sym3tri
Same here. You might want to consider making the "try it now" button/link more
prominent and above the login form. My 1st instinct was "Oh I have to sign up,
forget it."

~~~
bdr
Ok, I tweaked it a little, see what you think.

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nonamegiven
It's very nice, I hope it does well.

I may have missed it, but does this do _collaborative_ editing between 2 or
more people? That would be the thing that could convince me to use this or
something like it. Otherwise it's just a really nice drawing app whose
drawback (others would call it a feature) is that I have to get to it through
a service.

What I'd really like to see is something that two or more parties could
install locally, and collaborate interactively without a server in the middle,
or only the lightest of facilitation by a server. Which is not what you're
trying to do here and I apologize. What you've done is pretty sweet.

~~~
bdr
Thank you! Yes, it does. The way this currently works is that you can add
people as members to your page, from the settings pane. What's your use case
for a locally hosted version?

~~~
nonamegiven
No specific immediate need. In general I prefer to use things that won't go
away when the proprietor does, or that can be implemented and sold by anyone,
like email. Anyone can lose interest; Google killed Reader for example.

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benblodgett
It's confusing that you have to go into settings then page options to get them
back after closing. I'd leave a little tab on the right side of the page so
you can toggle it back and forth.

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andrewflnr
I like it. Can you tell how you do the infinite scrolling bit, or at least
give me some hints/links? I've been trying to do something similar, but it's
been a pain.

~~~
bdr
Email me

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Zombieball
Your landing page doesn't compel me at all to provide my email address & sign
up for an account. The blurb of text is great and all but a few pictures or
even a short video clip would go a long way.

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salman89
Would help to expose padding and box sizing to the user.

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cad
What is your tech stack?

~~~
bdr
Django, Heroku, Postgres, Backbone, CoffeeScript, Pusher, Redis

~~~
oaksagelew
Love how you do the text handling - click, with little draggable, resizeable
text area with handle; how did you build that - jQueryUI with lots of mods, or
something even lower level?

And have you seen paperi.st? (<http://paperi.st/>) Similar kind of idea as far
as text entry - and i'd also love to know how they did it.

~~~
bdr
Thank you! It's basically jQueryUI + lots of thinking about what different
user actions should mean. I hadn't seen paperi.st, but the basic effect isn't
hard: just create a new auto-focused input where the user clicks.

