

Ask YC: Feedback on early version of my startup, a digital whiteboard that doesn't suck - zhyder
http://www.dabbleboard.com

======
zhyder
I was frustrated by how annoying other options for digital whiteboarding were.
Most cases I (and others I know) just fell back to using a physical
whiteboard, or overusing words when a quick picture would do the job much
better. In brief, I felt the existing apps out there didn't do enough to
enhance our ability to communicate visually.

So I rethought what the UI should be to make it easier, faster and more
natural to use. And here's the result. It's in Flash but is still relatively
lightweight. I feel tempted to list out all the unique features, but I'd
rather you give it a spin and let me know what you think.

You can see the video at: <http://www.dabbleboard.com/main/video>

~~~
pxlpshr
Absolutely fantastic so far (all things considered)... can't wait for a
permission structure so we can actually use this thing behind closed doors
(virtually of course)!!

We have fought night and day with different products and solutions that just
aren't flexible, require crappy proprietary software (eBeam), or too
problematic and don't function as intended. And they all share a common trait
as you've already called out: "just not natural enough".

Pay attention to your competitor's mistakes, just don't get too wrapped up
chasing their tail. So many bad solutions right now. While you missed first to
market, it doesn't matter -- just make it the best. Good luck! You certainly
have my support and vote of confidence... I would be very interested in
private beta.

ps. I could see this being a prime candidate for acquisition by Adobe for
integration into Adobe Acrobat Connect, that is... if that don't rob you. :)

~~~
zhyder
Thanks! By permission structure do you mean just being able to specify "can
edit" versus "can view", or do you have something different in mind?

~~~
dcurtis
It'd be cool to have a secure group that can edit/see the whiteboard, for
internal company meetings, etc..

------
markbao
Ok, that's an awesome collaborative whiteboard. Nice to propose a simple UI
for it. Suggestions:

1\. Manual save, on the toolbar. For the savaholics!

2\. It's somewhat fast at refreshing, but have a dedicated Refresh button on
the toolbar, not under the Share panel. If I'm working with some friends and
they're all editing, I want to refresh it. Kind of like when you know
Twhirl/any other desktop Twitter client is going to fetch new tweets
automatically, but you still feel like refreshing.

2.1. Alternatively, let me move the Share Panel around. This could be an
option you implement in conjunction with the above.

2.2. Alternatively, have a refresh button only when the document is shared.

3\. When you save current document automatically, show it in the documents
dock, just to give people reassurance, and to familiarize them with the UI.

4\. Anglular (Z, etc) vectors turn into angles, not rectangles.

4.1. Freehand mode by default.

 _\--EDIT--_

5\. I realize it's hard (with regard to the sharing and synchronization of the
whiteboard shared users), and probably something to think about for the
future, but uploading of images to use as objects would be _extremely_ useful
in, say, mocking up UIs collaboratively, or diagramming.

6\. _Maybe_ make the text feature more noticeable by making a text tool button
on the toolbar. Most people will learn using the app by trying it, not by
watching the video. (I didn't, at least.)

This is impressive. Great work with it, I will be definitely using it!

~~~
zhyder
Wow that was amazingly fast feedback! Thanks!

1\. Good idea, was considering that anyway as a way to reduce my database
load, as opposed to saving every 4 seconds (if you change the drawing) which
is what I'm currently doing. (I'm a hardware engineer and this is my first
webapp: I just found out writes to the database are really really slow. Will
explore memcached optimizations too.)

2\. The intent of the refresh button is for when you're sharing the drawing
with others (I initially wanted realtime refresh, but got worried about
performance). Hence I put the button under the share panel. But I guess you're
right, you would need to refresh more often than you'd need to see who else
you're sharing with or to add people for sharing...

2.1 This should be trivial. Will do :).

3\. (Not sure if you saw the video or already know this.) The pane on the left
is the library pane (or "documents dock") that shows all your saved drawings.
The idea is the current drawing is just like any other drawing in the library,
just that it's got the focus for now. Or is this idea non-intuitive?

4\. The issue is how often would you want to draw angular vectors, compared to
rectangles. As an "optimization" for the UI, I allow users to draw a rectangle
with just 2 sides rather than all 4 sides (which also works), because I expect
them to be very common.

Thanks so much for the feedback! And I'm elated that you'd actually use it!

 _EDIT_

5\. You're the third person that asked for this feature, so now it's on my
near-term to-do list. I don't think it's hard; just to eat the cost of the
bandwidth and storage (which currently is very low).

6\. Hmmm... I personally hate revisiting the toolbar each time I have to enter
text, so I don't (yet) agree. This is on my "wait for more users to ask for
this feature" list :).

~~~
psyklic
6\. I jumped right in without watching the video, and I got pretty frustrated
when I wanted to type text and didn't see a toolbar option. I didn't even
think about just typing. I do think you should add it, then "power users" will
figure out that you can just start typing.

~~~
mtrimpe
It might be funny and intuitive to put a text button on the toolbar and when
it's clicked display a large hint on-screen saying something like:

"You can add text anywhere just by clicking and start to type. So no need for
this pesky button!"

And then fade the text button away or even better destroy it with an explosion
animation and then keep track of it in the session/user login.

------
tx
Startup? 15 years ago apps like this would be a nice weekend projects we'd do
for fun or (mostly) to impress each other in high school: doing it under DOS
using x86 assembly mixed up with some Pascal was comparable to JavaScript's
capabilities of modern day.

In 2008 it's a "startup". Nicely done.

~~~
rms
Why would this be any less viable than Zenter or Writely?

~~~
tx
I didn't said it was. I just find it funny how history repeats itself: when I
was a kid, doing something like this was a fun challenge, since most computers
worked in text mode 80x25 characters, and after a while an application like
that became trivial and boring to write (since about Windows 3.0 on PC).

But fast-forward 10 years and thanks to advances in technology - bam! It's
hard again :)

~~~
zhyder
Sure it's no more than a weekend project (though it took me a LOTT longer than
that). If a weekend project has the potential to add value to the lives of
many users -which I'm hoping for-, I'd call it a startup.

------
bouncingsoul
1\. I was surprised when all my drawings turned into squares. Freehand mode
should probably be the default since that's what most people will expect from
a whiteboard.

2\. You don't recognize triangles.

3\. Instead of having two modes, could you just have freehand mode with shape
buttons in the toolbar? I say this because the shape recognition didn't work
that well and I ended up needing to customize the shapes anyway.

4\. You should mark where the last click was. I moved my mouse after clicking
and had no idea where the text would show up.

~~~
zhyder
Thanks for the feedback!

1\. Hmm... I'm not sure of that. That's definitely what users expect of _bad_
whiteboards like MS Paint, the one in Netmeeting, etc. I think most
whiteboarding involves drawing block diagrams and such (or maybe that's just
the engineer in me talking). Could you share what types of drawings you
typically do?

2\. This is planned.

3\. Well I need to improve my shape recognition algorithm then. One of the key
features IMO that makes this more natural to use is that you don't have to
keep revisiting the toolbar (you can do a lot by _never_ visiting it). Could
you elaborate a bit on what shapes you were trying to draw, and what they
ended up into, so I know what to fix in my shape recognition algo?

4\. Good idea. I should do that.

~~~
DTrejo
I liked it:

3\. I hope that when you update the algorithm you will include ovals/others
shapes that can be drawn at a tilt. (or maybe tilted later on demand?)

Whenever I tried to draw tilted ovals they un-tilted and became really big.

PS This is one of the best Ask YC posts I've seen so far. Everybody likes
helping in this kind of discussion--its also obvious that you value every bit
of feedback.

~~~
zhyder
Thanks! I'm not sure I'd be able to update the algorithm to automatically
detect tilt. That would probably have to be a tool you use after drawing (like
the "group" button).

I'm curious, what types of drawing would you need tilt/skew in?

~~~
DTrejo
I am not sure, I was simply fooling around with it and noticed that the
tilt/skew for ellipses had not been added.

------
zhyder
So much great feedback here. Thanks all! These Qs may get drowned in the
comments, but I'll try anyway:

\- Do you think anything here is patentable? I hate patent trolls as much as
anyone else, and I do wish legislation eventually disallows (most or all)
software and UI patents. And I know patents don't make consumer websites,
happy users do. And I know it's a distraction to file the paperwork. But just
curious...

\- For the free version (what you currently see), should the "Make Public" be
default, with opt-out? Pros: users will have a great pool of drawings to copy
from; could also evolve into a great community. Cons: users' privacy
compromised, especially if they don't realize it's being made public. (To try
to avoid the latter, I'd mention it during sign up, but that may not be
enough.)

~~~
ph0rque
\- My previous startup's experience with patents was: if you want to, you can
write a patent that weaves around areas covered by other patents. So, with
enough effort, the answer is yes.

\- Please don't do this: gliffy does does for the free version, and it's
really annoying. If you want, make it so that a popup comes up and makes you
choose whether it should be public or not, or just leave it opt-in.

------
irrelative
Nice job! I made a related project when I first began web programming and
javascript about 2 years ago, though I've since mostly abandoned it
(<http://boxily.com>) -- it's only javascript so I couldn't do all the neat
flash things you do here.

I'm with you though, most digital whiteboards do suck, and everyone seems to
try to do one :)

A couple features that would be cool:

1\. SVG export? Maybe not in high demand, but the engineer in me loves vector
graphics. 2\. Line thickness? Something to think about. 3\. I like what
crescendo mentioned as well.

Good luck! -Justin

~~~
zhyder
1\. svg export would be easier than visio export, but has less market value.
So overall I don't know which to do first :).

2\. There's just 2 thicknesses supported so far. How much more control do you
think you'd need (3 levels?, 4 levels?)? I'm intentionally limiting your
options so you don't have to waste time trying to decide what thickness line
to choose. We don't have this problem with a real whiteboard :). (Plus it
keeps the toolbar simple and uncluttered.)

------
crescendo
This is pretty neat. A few feature suggestions:

1) Constrain aspect ratio on resize when holding down a control key.

2) I really like the way it guesses that you're trying to draw a circle when
your freehand is sufficiently curved. A neat addition to this would be bezier
spline interpolation for smooth curves if it's clear that the user isn't
drawing a closed loop.

3) Import existing image as shape.

4) Shapes library (for things like ER diagrams, UML, etc...)

~~~
zhyder
Thanks for the feedback!

1) This is planned. Will also snap to grid when moving objects.

2) I want to do this. But as I said in another comment, I just need to figure
out the UI for enabling the user to change the curvature of the line.

3) You're now the fourth person that asked for this :). It's definitely on my
to-do list now.

4) I'm hoping the community will produce this. Anyone can do "Share -> Make
Public" and then the drawings will show up in the Public Library. You can then
copy anyone else's drawing into your own personal library. (I do plan to add
better functionality for searching/tagging items in the public library
eventually. It just didn't matter yet coz no one has anything there so far.)

~~~
gunderson
it would be very cool to have real time sharing -- or a few seconds behind --
so that it could be used during a phone call for collaborative
brainstorming...

~~~
zhyder
Thanks. It does have this, the "few seconds behind" version :), though you
have to click a button (Share -> Refresh) to refresh the drawing. Try using
the "Share" functionality with a friend after signing up.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
I really really want to be able to use this without signing up. I just need a
link to give a friend so they can spontaneously collaborate with me. The
diagram doesn't need to persist past that session, so long as we can both save
a png. The spontaneity and ease of use is a killer feature for me.

------
andr
Excellent! I've been looking for one of those for ages.

Only problem I found so far:

I started a drawing, clicked sign up to share it and it was gone.

~~~
zhyder
Good point. I should fix that. Thanks!

------
tptacek
I like it. If I were you, I'd give it Visio features and sell it for $10/50
diagrams/month to small/medium companies.

~~~
zhyder
Thanks! I was thinking of a similar pricing plan. I worried that companies
wouldn't be comfortable with the security issues of having their drawings on
my servers though. Any tips on what I could do to make the service secure, and
to make them trust me?

Btw, just like Basecamp is the anti-Project, I'd like to think of Dabbleboard
as the anti-Visio (or anti-Netmeeting-whiteboard) :).

~~~
tptacek
I could give you a million things you could do to really improve the security
of your service, but the reality is there are a couple of superficial things
you can do right now that will get you over the marketing hump on security:

* Deliver all content over HTTPS.

* Have big long random strings of hex characters in the URLs.

~~~
zhyder
Yeah I should do the https thing. At least makes the transfer secure.

I already do a bit of random strings. Try sharing a drawing, the link it
produces includes a 16character code that must match for the sharee to be able
to access the drawing.

~~~
tptacek
It doesn't really add any meaningful security. The real security issues with
your app are going to be in your code, not on the wire. But it's a strong
psychological signal.

It's the same with the random IDs. Generate UUIDs with SHA1 or something, and
make them show up in the URL bar. The signal is, "there's no simple integer
counter here where if I incr it, I get some other customer's data".

------
boredguy8
Awesome. My suggestions:

1) You need a "snap to platonic" type option. I have too many ovals that I
wanted to be circles, and too many rectangles I wanted to be squares.

2) Need a "shift" resize functionality, so that it changes scale but not the
'aspect ratio'.

3) Need the ability to resize text by click+dragging.

4) The border of an 'object' is useful for knowing what's going to be affected
by my action, but it really should 'do' something, too. Based on my UI
experience, I've been trained to think I can click on the border and move
whatever I just clicked on. Instead, I kept drawing lines.

5) Could use a "select all" function.

6) If I select an object then click a new color box, it should change the
color of the selected object. Or I should be able to "drag" a color onto an
object (or both!) to change it.

A few "brilliant" points:

1) I love that you 'save' the pages I've made, and I -absolutely love- that
they function as objects that can be used on a new page.

2) Thank you for letting me get "back inside" a text box I've already created.

3) It's -fast-.

~~~
zhyder
Thanks!

1) Coming soon.

2) Could be done, but I'm not sure how useful it is for whiteboarding. (It is
with photos though.)

3) Not sure about this either: you'd inadvertently end up with an ugly drawing
with too many font sizes... and you'd have to spend time to make them the same
size.

4) Right now the only thing the border tells you is what you'll end up
selecting if you click. The issue is selection vs drawing disambiguation
(described in some other commments).

5) How about a hotkey "CTRL-A" instead?

6) Coming soon.

------
rms
This is good, you should submit to Techcrunch after iterating based on
feedback.

------
STHayden
I haven't used the other ones much but they always seemed a lot slower then
drawing on paper. This does seem super easy. I like it. congrats.

------
Hexstream
I have two suggestions for text labels:

1\. Make the click location the center of the label, both horizontally and
vertically. If I want to place a label in the middle of an object it's more
convenient if I don't have to estimate in my head the length of what I'll type
and thus where to click. I know I could reposition the label manually as a
second step but why not making it easy to get it right in the first place?

Maybe have a toggle button so you can switch to left-justified but make
centered the default.

2\. If I reposition a shape with a label in it the system should heuristically
guess that I mean to move the label with it. Right now if I make a shape with
a label in it and move the shape moves but the text doesn't, that's silly. I
realize it could be nontrivial to guess what shape a label is "on" if it's at
the intersection of multiple shapes but at least do it in the simpler cases.

------
gunderson
Great idea and great implementation.

A few suggestions:

\- fast (or almost) autosaving/updating so that it can be easily used on a
phone call for collaborative brainstorming w/o having to click save all the
time.

\- add meta keywords or other text on the page so that google indexes the text
content (added via the text tool)

\- Add bottom tabs like excel does for sheets to make a sequence of
whiteboards possible -- of related stuff.

\- full screen mode

\- let users create libraries of shapes that do cool/useful things

\- integration with that guy's technology that uses wiimote IR receiver to let
the user draw with an infrared LED as a light pen. Projector projects the
dabbleboard onto the wall, I draw with light pen.

\- the ability to zoom way in/out and scroll (maybe i want my dabble board to
be 30 feet wide..

~~~
zhyder
Thanks!

1\. I'm worried about database load. I'll have to do some intelligent
memcaching etc. (haven't thought this thru yet) to make that a possibility.

2\. Yep I've thought of that, tho I'm a little worried it might creep people
out. (It's not as awesome as Gmail to get away with it.) That's one possible
way of monetization, the other being the freemium model. But right now I just
want to get some users, get the features right.

3\. Hmmm... the library pane on the left kinda does that. Would you want it to
work in a different way?

4\. Sure. But I don't want to resize the canvas for UI reasons (see another of
my comments on window resizing).

5\. You can already create a library of shapes (the left pane). Did you mean
something different?

6\. I absolutely want to do something like that. But I've dreamed up a very
different -and I think better- implementation. To build and sell a real
physical product like that I'll need quite a bit of funding. PG, you there? :)

7\. Yeah I was hoping to avoid that (see 4. above). Coz I hate having to
constantly zoom in/out and pan around just to draw. But it may be needed if
the current canvas just isn't big enough :(.

~~~
gunderson
Excellent. My apologies for not knowing about some existing features...

------
apu
Very nice. Some small comments (my apologies if some of these are there
already and I just didn't notice):

1\. Tooltips or a statusbar at the bottom which tell you what a button does
when you mouse-over it.

2\. Some visual differentiation between normal buttons (new, download, etc.)
and toggle buttons (freehand, arrow mode, etc.)

3\. Proportional resizing with shift or control (as others have mentioned)

4\. Easier way to multiple-select objects rather than shift-clicking each one

5\. Snapping between different objects (perhaps toggleable) and/or a grid

6\. What software did you use for creating the demo screencast? It looks good
(and I might need to record a screencast for my startup soon...)

~~~
zhyder
Thanks!

1\. You're referring to the move/replicate/scale/delete handles, right? I
could probably add that.

2\. The visual differentiation so far is that the toggle buttons are clumped
together. There's one "bug" though: the top and bottom edges of a group should
be straight lines. (I actually have a good reason for this bug :).)

3\. You mean resizing in quantized amounts (e.g. 10pixels) rather than
continuously right? If yes, this is planned.

4\. Yeah this can be annoying, and I don't have a good solution for this yet
(I'm reluctant to add a "select" button in the toolbar like all other drawing
apps). But I'm hoping you don't have to do this often since you can use
"Group" functionality.

5\. Snap to grid is planned.

6\. I used iShowU on the Mac and uploaded to Viddler (thank God they eat the
BW cost for nothing in return). When you embed your Viddler video, make sure
to select the same resolution as your original capture; scaling it will ruin
it. I used the built-in mic on my MBP, so the audio sucks; will invest in a
better mic soon.

------
fendale
Fantastic - I have been looking for something like that for ages that just
works.

I even posted in a thread on there that a 'usable whiteboard' was one of those
problems that still needed solving - I reckon you are a long way there - well
done.

------
robdimarco
1) Said before...Image upload into drawings would be nice 2) Adding clickable
URLs in the text would also be nice 3) Different download option types,
especially SVG, would be helpful so that it can be sent to people with Visio
4) Did not recognize a diamond shape, I use that all the time for flowcharts
5) Easier way to create lines that connect shapes. Again, i do this all the
time when creating flow charts and it is sort of a pain to have to click the
arrow icon. Maybe if I was using the right mouse button???

Overall very nice, I will probably use again.

------
lux
This is pretty awesome! Very usable, not too many features but the ones you
really need and they work really well. I can totally see this maximized on a
virtual whiteboard too.

It would be pretty cool to have access to apps like this for integration with
3rd party sites. Even if they left the original site and went to yours but
saved back to where they came from, that would be very useful. I know
www.snipshot.com does exactly that for image editing and it works well.
Perhaps that could be a paid service idea... :)

~~~
zhyder
Thanks! That's an interesting feature, hadn't thought of that. At first
thought, I actually don't think it'd be technically too difficult either, just
need to make a clean API.

------
jbenz
Very cool, seriously impressive. I love the simplicity of the resize, copy,
delete, and move handles.

My only quibble- something has to be done about the logo.

I get what you're trying to do... make the logo look like it was designed with
the whiteboard itself. Not a bad idea, but I think you should use it more
abstractly, like the logo is inspired by the idea of a handwritten writeboard
(not quite so literal).

The thin black lines with fat blue outlines is a little funky.

All around though, great work.

~~~
zhyder
"look like".

It was actually made with Dabbleboard itself (except for the word "BETA"). I
had the general idea for the logo, and I thought to myself "which is the
easiest app for me to make the logo in... oh wait".

It's just a placeholder for now, and will get replaced eventually.

------
ardit33
Not bad. Why everything I draw must be a circle, square or line. Sometimes i
need a curvy line, or a angled one. Don't force everything. Need shapes. More
of them. Visio is a pretty decent tool, (Omnigraffe for macs is good too), try
to copy some features they have, but make them a simpler as possible.

Then allow me to export it in different formats, Visio being one of them, as
it seems it is the tool used the most.

~~~
zhyder
Thanks! Other shapes are planned: diamonds and triangles for sure. I want
curved lines but haven't figured out the UI for them yet (I'd need an
additional handle compared to straight lines, to allow the user to change the
control point and hence the curvature.)

Yep Visio and Omnigraffle are definitely the heavyweights of drawing. They
have lots more features; which in particular do you think are most important?
(I think even stuff like solid/gradient shapes & shadows are superfluous, but
I'm just one user :)).

~~~
ashu
shadows are useful. just make your block-shapes have a shadow by default (like
omnigraffle) and it completely changes how smooth and professional even the
simplest of diagrams look.

~~~
zhyder
Sure, I could consider a default shadow. But I'm reluctant to clutter the UI
by giving the user a gazillion options for shadows, none of which help you
communicate your ideas any better.

------
rory096
I like it (though I can't say I have much use for a digital whiteboard). It
would be nice if it would automatically resize to your window size, though;
the bottom is just under the bottom of my window and scrolling just for that
little bit that isn't really necessary is annoying. Perhaps this could include
a button to extend the space if necessary (perhaps only inside the box, too,
rather than extending the whole page).

~~~
zhyder
Thanks! I have a UI problem with resizing. If you have to see a drawing made
by a friend who used a bigger window, you'd see a truncated drawing. The
obvious solution here is to have canvas you can zoom-in/zoom-out of, AND allow
horizontal/vertical panning (like Google Maps). I think that would clutter the
UI and make using it annoying.

So I decided to support only the size that I felt would fit in 95% of browser
windows. The Dabbleboard drawing+drawing_toolbar+drawing_title fit exactly in
a 1024x768 window with the browser's address bar, bookmarks bar, and tab bar
all enabled.

------
lincolnq
I would dearly like to be able to create links between objects, which follow
when I move the objects around. I've tried about a jillion
whiteboard/flowchart type apps and none of them do this, but yours could!

This is because I often find myself trying to mock up a graph of some sort and
not know where the objects are supposed to go when I'm drawing them, and then
it's impossible to later move them around.

~~~
zhyder
That could be useful I guess. Any other users here want/need this?

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
I could absolutely use such a feature.

------
lr
Hey zhyder, this is great! And if you want to make money, here is the perfect
thing to add for paying users: dimensions! Artists could easily use this to
layout art on a wall! Let them set the width of the wall, and the size of
paintings, etc., and then let they lay them out on the wall, and give them the
dimensions! My girlfriend could start using this today if it had that, and
we'd gladly pay for it!

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andrewf
Very nice.

Couple of ideas: * It would be nice if freehand mode used some criteria to
separate "changing direction" from "wobbling a bit" in order to straighten out
edges, so I could use it to draw a perfect triangle.

* It would be nice if entering text used some sort of edge detection to automatically fit text into a box/circle/etc.

------
tb
Your circle-detection code is a bit overzealous. I put it in arrow mode and
tried to draw a bunch of arrows from one side of the canvas to the other, and
if my lines were even a little bit curved, it turned them into ovals. It
should really only turn it into an oval if the user has changed direction
substantially during the drawing.

~~~
zhyder
Yes, the problem is that I don't support curved lines yet. (Do let me know if
you intended it to be a _straight_ line and the algo still messed up.) Sounds
like everyone wants curved lines, so back to the drawing board -ahem
dabbleboard-. Will definitely find a way to add it.

------
deathbyzen
You know it's probably just me but I couldn't draw a thing. It loads and I can
play with the start whiteboard, but I can't add anything new or draw anything.
I'm running Max OS X 10.5.3 and using Firefox 3 RC1.

I blame Adobe though, not your program.

------
migpwr
Just thought you should know... your app caused a crowd in my cubicle when
someone walked by and saw me playing with it. They asked what I was doing and
I told them what it was and everyone had a "damn, thats cool!" feeling about
it.

nice job!

~~~
zhyder
Awesome, thanks for spreading the word!

------
JacobAldridge
Agree with most of the other comments, especially around uploading images /
objects as a base.

I've used www.vyew.com a few times as a guest - the other super feature they
have which you might consider is inbuilt VoIP.

Great effort!

~~~
skmurphy
I would let skype do the VoIP, or hidefconferencing, or freeconference: it
will be enough work to continue to evolve the whiteboard features.

------
natrius
The problem is that no one is going to remember your site when they actually
need a whiteboard or share it with their friends. To fix that, give it a
purpose instead of leaving it as a blank canvas for people to use. For
example, you could use the whiteboard as the basis for a iSketch
(<http://isketch.net>) ripoff, while making it clear that people can use the
whiteboard on its own. People will use it and share it with their friends and
you'll end up with more users for your core product. There are plenty of other
ways to achieve the same goal.

The downside is that whatever you come up with to get users may suck away too
much time and effort from improving the product itself. You can always
outsource the building of such add-ons by providing an API and directing users
to your site that way.

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serhei
Ability to change zoom level would be a plus, and then making the size of the
whiteboard conform to the size of the window (the whiteboard doesn't fit in a
browser window at 1024*768; not essential but annoying).

~~~
zhyder
I was hoping it would fit in 1024x768. How many toolbars does your browser
have enabled (in addition to the address+tab bars)?

~~~
serhei
OS X menu bar, Safari with address+tab & bookmarks bar, OS X dock.

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mishmax
I have flashblock installed (Firefox 2), and when the site first loads up the
flash box is offscreen on the right. I had to scroll to the right, press
"play", and then the box went to the right location.

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ph0rque
Wow, looks like you hit a nerve here (in a good way)! I hope you have a clear
vision of where you want to take this, because the users will pull you every
which way, as far as user requests :~).

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mullr
This is cool. I was able to figure it out in about 30 seconds. The text is a
bit off... I assumed that there should be a toolbar button. Maybe it would
just give you instructions...

~~~
zhyder
"The text is a bit off... I assumed that there should be a toolbar button.
Maybe it would just give you instructions..."

Sorry for being dumb, but I didn't follow. Could you clarify? Thanks a lot!

~~~
mullr
I didn't realize I should click and type. Instead I looked for a toolbar
button. But once a figured out how to do it (by reading another comment,
actually), I really liked it.

To accommodate that style of learning, you could have a 'text' button in the
toolbar whose only purpose is to give the user a message stating that they
need to simply click and type.

~~~
zhyder
I'm trying to solve this problem by loading my default drawing (which loads
when you aren't signed in), the one with all the instructions. I should make
the instruction for how to enter text ("Click anywhere and start typing to
enter text") more visible I guess.

~~~
mullr
Had I read it I would have seen this, I suppose. But frequently users just
don't read the text.

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DTrejo
You could put a picture of yourself in the about section to build a personal
connection with the first users.

Edit: There's also a typo (harware)

~~~
zhyder
Oops, thanks for pointing that out.

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jsjenkins168
This is really cool. If you incorporate collaboration functionality it could
also be very useful for presentations or online meetings.

~~~
zhyder
There is collaboration functionality already. Click the "Share" button on the
top-right. It's not truly real-time yet though. (You either share offline, or
if working online together, you have to hit the annoying refresh button).

I need to figure out long-polling/Comet and see if I can make true real-time
work.

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ph0rque
Here's a feature request: allow users to embed a given drawing into blogs,
etc. That would be a _killer_ feature, imo.

~~~
zhyder
Request granted :).

You can already do that, altho I need to make it more obvious. Click Share ->
Make Public. Now you have a public webpage you can link to, and you can
directly embed the image in blogs too. (The latter part is non-obvious but
you'll discover if you check source :)... tonite I'll fix this so that the
public link reflects this option explicitly).

~~~
ph0rque
Awesome! One more request: let the power users get a little button they can
put on their sites (say, right above a rich text area) that, when clicked,
brings up an empty border in a javascript pseudo-popup. After creating the
drawing, it would automatically be included in the text field (or something to
that effect). Sorry if I'm not clear on what I mean...

EDIT: I think Lux explained it a bit better in this post:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=202849>

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tocomment
Very nice! Can collaberation happen in real time? So you just see what's
happening without having to click refresh?

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vegai
Might be cool, but as it is Flash, I won't be using it.

Could this be done reasonably with Javascript et al?

~~~
zhyder
Javascript's ability to do graphics is very limited; you have to do hacky
1pixel divs, and you still won't get pretty anti-aliasing.

Even if I had infinite time to write the code in JS, I'd have to replicate a
lot of functionality of the Flash player, and you'd end up with maybe 5x the
code you'd have to download compared to the Flash swf file. Doubt you'd prefer
that experience.

I think most people hate Flash coz its: (i) obtrusive as ads on sites, and
(ii) it takes too much goddamn CPU (or at least that's why I hate it on my
Mac). But I've paid close attention to the CPU usage in Dabbleboard; let me
know how it runs for you.

~~~
vegai
I don't hate it, it's just that Adobe's Linux implementation of Flash is very
bad.

~~~
zhyder
Yes, the Mac version could be better too. I'm curious if you're seeing issues
with Dabbleboard in particular. If not you could still un-adblock (or un-
flashblock) it :).

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atoulouse
There should be some way to work on the whiteboard with other people
simultaneously. I need that.

~~~
zhyder
It's there, but you need to sign up for that. After signing up, click "Share".

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aak
Check out sketchfu.com. Similar technology, but geared to a slightly different
audience.

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noahlt
One of the first YC startups did exactly this. I'm not sure what happened to
it.

~~~
rms
<http://www.thinkature.com/> ?

~~~
noahlt
Yes! Thank you.

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ashu
this is incredibly slick. i love how easy it feels. one major problem i faced
-- once an object is selected, i thought dragging would move it, but of course
it doesn't. That created a bunch of unneeded shapes for me.

~~~
zhyder
Yeah I'm in two minds about that. The problem arises coz of my "optimization"
where I automatically figure out whether you want to: 1\. Select: click
without dragging. 2\. Draw: click while dragging.

All other drawing apps have separate tools in the toolbar for select and draw
(and even more for square/circle/text... yeesh). And I want to minimize your
visits to the toolbar.

If I made it drag instead of draw in your example, then I'd need a "select"
tool again :(.

Or I could choose the middle ground: if an object is _already selected_ (i.e.
not just being hovered over), then I do a move instead of a draw. Would this
help?

~~~
ashu
Indeed, that would fix it for me very cleanly for me, at least.

~~~
zhyder
Any other users prefer this "middle ground" of selection versus drawing
disambiguation? :) I can add it right easily enough.

~~~
gruseom
Yes. On first thought, at least, this seems like exactly the right way to do
it.

Very nice job, by the way. It might be the first "critique my startup" post
I've seen here where I took a look and (a) it made sense, and (b) didn't suck.
Actually, it's a lot better than not sucking; it's fast and immediately usable
and generally feels better than average.

Edit: the name dabbleboard is sort of crowded by dabble.com and dabbledb.com,
though. My first thought was that it was an offshoot of one of these.

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xenoterracide
I like it. Get a Favicon. I bookmark all my sites using those images.

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zkinion
It was EXTREMELY painful just drawing simple stuff because the "free
transform" resizer would pop up after every segment drawn. Make this optional.

Also, don't even make people sign up. Not right now. Later.

~~~
zhyder
If by "free transform resizer" you're referring to the green move/scale/etc.
circles, then that shouldn't happen. They're supposed to only come up when you
click on an object, not right after drawing each shape.

If that's happening it must be a bug somewhere in my code. I'll try to
replicate it. Thanks!

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chwolfe
locked up my browser... os x 10.3.9 on firefox 2.0.0.14

~~~
zhyder
Sorry about that. I've heard one or two other instances. So much for the Flash
player being consistent :(.

I have 10.5.2 and the same version of Firefox. I don't have a way to debug
this right now (can only afford one mac), but I'll try to replicate the hang
in other browsers.

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henryw
awesome, when i click freehand and arrow, it uses the freehand.

how do i add more image assets on the left?

~~~
zhyder
Just drag your selection to the pane on the left.

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babyshake
Simple crop feature would be awesome

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aleo
Ctrl-Z for undo would be great

~~~
zhyder
Already works, try it :)

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newt0311
Very nice. One thing that seems to have gone un-noticed till now: LaTeX
support would be nice.

Secondly, the UI right now is very sparse and that is a great thing. Make sure
that extra features don't clutter it up.

Other than that, great app.

