
Show HN: a web-based xkcd-style comix editor - dr_win
http://cmx.io
======
brokentone
Disappointed the top comments are criticizing and discussing the browser
limitations.

For a weekend project, this guy created a UI that deals intuitively deals with
angles, bezier curves, dependent relations between objects, and turns it all
into HTML, and you guys are that butt hurt it only works in Chrome?

~~~
mintplant
While I agree with your message, I don't think "butt hurt" is the most
appropriate term you could have used here.

~~~
brokentone
Sure, while yes, these people don't actually seem "offended" as "butt hurt"
would somewhat crudely imply, your need to assert such a pedantic issue is the
very essence of my original point.

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alemhnan
Man, this is amazing.

Think about the endless possibilities. On top of that it will be possible to
build a library of objects like: "NormalGuy", "Ninja", "Tree" and so on.

Then it will be cool to programmatically move them. No Idea if that is
feasible or not. Maybe not, but I will say otherwise.

Then we could describe an environment in which they could act in a declarative
way. We could add simple behaviours shaped on top of simple goals. Those goals
could be described in a similar way as the environment. If we tie a behaviour
to an animation we have small drones of "Ninja" that act on themselves
(well..kind of).

Or we could move those animation with the keyboard. I mean, at this point
possibilities are just to be enumerated.

At the end it will be like a DSL to describe animation and behaviour and
environment. Like an engine for videogames, animation, even smart behaviour
(not mentioning AI and similars)

I don't know, I smell something really great behind that think that you built.

~~~
catshirt
forgive me if i've missed any sardonicism, but you might be interested in
learning you are describing Flash in thorough detail.

~~~
alemhnan
ahahah, yep you are actually right. A big difference, probably the only
important one, is that you could read, and modify, the source using the same
medium (the browser). So the gap for people to play with that is almost zero.
This is probably one of the forces that have allowed the Internet to become
what it is today.

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znowi
"STOP! WebKit is required here. The Comix Editor was tested under Chrome. It
uses some webkit-specific tricks."

WebKit - the new IE.

~~~
baddox
The main problem with IE wasn't that it was an exclusive product incompatible
with other browsers. The problem was that it was bad. I'm not a fan of people
only supporting WebKit, but at least WebKit browsers are _good_.

~~~
wazoox
I used IE briefly in 2000 and 2001, before Mozilla (0.9) became usable enough
and Phoenix came out; back then (IE 5.5 to IE 6.0) it definitely was the best
browser, by far.

~~~
jackalope
It was the most _forgiving_ browser, with a quirks mode that handled broken
code like a champ. But Opera was the best browser, and if your code rendered
correctly in it, it would probably render correctly everywhere else (except
maybe Netscape 4, an abomination that took too long to die).

~~~
nirvdrum
Opera was also commercial. At some point there was a free adware version, but
I think that was later than 2001. After IE, most people stopped paying for web
browsers.

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jawns
Wow, combine this with <http://xkcdgraphs.com> and you've got the ability to
do a pretty good Randall Munroe impression!

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anigbrowl
I thought the Randall Munro personality came from the writing. Stick figures
are not the hard part.

~~~
DigitalJack
but they are the seasoning.

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eggbrain
Here's my problem.

It works, fairly well. But I spent about 15 minutes doing one panel, trying to
figure out the minor nuances. I kept thinking to myself "I could do a whole
comic in about 5 minutes in photoshop" as I adjusted the person's location,
arm, speech, etc (and that was just modifying the characters that were already
in the scene). In the end it was just not worth it in my mind.

Also, imagine creating something like Randalls "Click and Drag" comic
(xkcd.com/1110/) -- how would you create all these custom objects in the
editor without changing it into something similar to an HTML5 web-photoshop,
at which point you might as well do that?

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dr_win
Yes, this a prototype and definitely not for everyone. It has many downsides.
I agree Photoshop gives you full pixel control.

I think it has some upsides too. You may treat comix source as html code and
apply tools we have for coding today, eg. diffs, version control,
collaboration via github. People may also collaborate on library of items,
actors and their poses, so you don't have to re-create them or copy&pase all
the time. Also localisation will be a snap. And it will possibly allow
animations in the future.

Actually I built this for a bigger project. I want to explain Bitcoin
technically in the form of XKCD comix. This won't be one-off comix strip. This
will be something like wiki/book which will evolve and I hope it will attract
other contributors (not necessarily graphic designers).

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tarr11
OP is missing the point - the markup idea is brilliant.

The WYSIWIG will come in it's million forms later and you shouldn't focus on
it.

I just need comix.vim and I'm good.

I'm imagining real time comics. Chat comics. Comic discussion forums. It's
endless! ;)

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vidarh
> Chat comics.

It'll be 1996 all over again:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Comic_Chat>

~~~
sosuke
Damn, good memories of that, forgot what it was called!

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AlexDanger
I think its brilliant. I love the balance you've created between the visual
editor and the markup.

Have you considered this as an educational tool? This is a fun and useful
introduction to HTML and markup languages in general.

Would it be possible to highlight the relevant markup node when you've
selected an object in the visual editor? That would be neat from a learning
perspective.

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artursapek
I love the scribbly cubic beziers you have going on for the speech bubbles.
Moving around their control points makes them dance a little. Great stuff.

~~~
shurcooL
Reminds me of that part from Bret Victor's Inventing on Principle talk.

Those who have seen it will know what I'm referring to.

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olegbl
To go along with it, making XKCD diagrams in Mathematica:
[http://blog.wolfram.com/2012/10/05/automating-xkcd-
diagrams-...](http://blog.wolfram.com/2012/10/05/automating-xkcd-diagrams-
transforming-serious-to-funny/)

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memset
This is neat!

Unfortunately, the editor does not work for me. It makes Chrome crash the page
:(

I'm running Chrome 24.0.1312.69 on one of those new Dell XPS 13 Ubuntu
machines running 12.04.2 LTS. Is there any other information you'd want for
debugging, or pages to try?

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tobinharris
It's like <http://yUML.me>, but better :)

<http://yuml.me/e5d8e14e>

[http://yuml.me/diagram/scruffy;/usecase/edit/[Bob]-(This%20i...](http://yuml.me/diagram/scruffy;/usecase/edit/\[Bob\]-\(This%20is%20a%20shit%20comic\),%20\[Phil\]-\(Agree!\))

T

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darkstar999
Aw, snap! Crashes chrome 24.0.1312.57 on Ubuntu 12.10. I tried opening the
console to get additional info, but it doesn't show anything.

~~~
mercuryrising
This is one of the coolest things about HN. There's a link there, and it
crashes your browser. Instead of getting angry, you try to help the person
whose creation crashed your browser.

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triplesec
Brilliant. But... now wait for a deluge of tenth-rate internet comics!

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dr_win
Good news. Comix Editor will work on Opera soon. And without my work :-)

[http://my.opera.com/ODIN/blog/300-million-users-and-move-
to-...](http://my.opera.com/ODIN/blog/300-million-users-and-move-to-webkit)

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davidrudder
This is awesome! Okay,I agree with others that say that photoshop is easier,
and that most people ( _ahem_ , like yours truly) would make crappy comics.
But...c'mon...an _xkcd_ editor?!?!?1!! hecka cool

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gioele
The source shows quite clearly why the HTML community needs try to address the
adoption of namespaces in HTML5 ASAP, maybe not in the current form but in
some simplified form.

I feel uncomfortable with the use of non-namespaced tags and squatting on
common terms. For example, cmx.io uses tags like <scene>, <label>, <drawing>
and so on. I really would prefer it used something like <cmx:scene> or
<c:scene>, so that it would be possible to mix CMX tags with other libraries
that use similar tag names.

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jonsherrard
Bravo! How difficult was it making the characters posable?

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b_k
It'd be cool if changes in visual editor would focus & highlight the changes
in text and vice versa.

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JohnLBevan
Great project - really easy to use and works well. As other comments have said
there's tonnes of potential / additional functionality which could be added,
but this is a great start.

For anyone interested, here's my play: <http://cmx.io/#4949114>

~~~
dr_win
You made my day :)

It reminds me I have to build some feed with published comics :)

~~~
JohnLBevan
Thanks, you made mine too - it's rare that I can find a library which I can
create something with within an hour of coming across it, and this is also my
first contribution to the world of memes, so chuffed that I got to do it using
such a great utility. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with next.

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10098
Better idea, draw the comic by hand in 5 minutes (I think everyone can draw
stick figures), photo it, desaturate and add high contrast in gimp, voila. No
webkit required :)

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dominic_cocch
This is fun, but for it be useful in production the control scheme would need
to be made more GUI-like. Great start!

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eksith
Why do I also get a Windows Media Player extension warning? Surely, JS + CSS
doesn't need WMP help?

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dangoor
This is really neat. It would be cool to combine it with one of the JS-based
presentation engines.

~~~
dr_win
Yep, that was actually my original plan. I wanted to make slides explaining
some Bitcoin concepts, but I wasn't able to draw a comics. This actually
started as a small hack on top of impress.js :)

Hey K., do you remember? You interviewed me back in 2009 for a Bespin position
:-) The world is pretty small. Hope you are doing well.

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fsniper
And now, someone should create an AI capable of mimicking XKCD humor, and
viola! Automated xkcd!

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readme
Cool. Take it a step further and make it so we don't have to edit the HTML/CSS
code.

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dr_win
Hey folks, thanks for all your great comments and watch out for v0.2 :)

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jschuur
Science not included.

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tanepiper
Stick some IRC behind this and instant Comic Chat!

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bobbaddeley
Well done! That's really impressive work.

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Duhck
This is awesome. Such a great idea!

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herdrick
This is great, nice work!

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ctruman
bootstrap is everywhere

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jQueryIsAwesome
This little comic I "created" some time ago is never going to be so relevant
again so here it is [inmature humor ahead]: <http://i.imgur.com/EnXc9e9.jpg>

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Frozenlock
Any known issue with Chromium?

I just get an error message saying that the page script was taking too much
memory and was stopped.

~~~
chewxy
Same here (Version 24.0.1312.56 Ubuntu 12.10 (24.0.1312.56-0ubuntu0.12.10.3))

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CletusTSJY
Marry me.

