[HN Gopher] Show HN: OurBoard - free and open source online whit...
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Show HN: OurBoard - free and open source online whiteboard
Author : nullzzz
Score : 148 points
Date : 2021-10-09 10:24 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ourboard.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ourboard.io)
| woudsma wrote:
| Heroku error :) That was fast.
|
| Edit: never mind, back up!
| nullzzz wrote:
| Oof. Would check logs if not at the gym atm IRLOL
| nullzzz wrote:
| Heroku killed the app but it was fortunately span back up
| quickly. Apparently 512MB memory on a single Heroku dyno is
| not Hacker News scale. The application does have a
| horizontally scalable architecture for sharding boards on
| multiple hosts, it's not just fully deployed as there has
| mostly been just 1-2 boards in use at any given time.
| nullzzz wrote:
| Here's an Ourboard board that demonstrates the key features of
| the service.
| https://www.ourboard.io/b/0b5a9bd8-93ae-446c-afbd-80ebfcb1e0...
|
| It's read-only, but you can select all (Cmd-A), create a new
| board and paste the contents on a new board of yours on the
| Ourboard front page.
|
| I now realize that a Fork Board feature might be useful.
|
| Also having second thoughts on whether it's a good idea to have a
| "default board" that's read-write for anonymous users. Some
| political content observed on that one today.
| Operyl wrote:
| Given the racist stuff being thrown around on it now, it's
| probably better that you just make it generate a random new
| board with example data.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| At some point I have to wonder if it is actual racists or HN
| users poking holes into moderation, security, etc. This seems
| a bit too niche to be the target of random actual racists.
| nullzzz wrote:
| Yes. The shared global board definitely has to go. Should
| have known not to trust people to behave...
| juicysaurus wrote:
| I've contributed some lines of code to this project, and thought
| it might be interesting to some that the library powering the UI
| is also written by the OP. It's a clever experiment that uses JSX
| but instead of VDOM diffing it embeds observables directly into
| the DOM.
|
| Harmaja (https://github.com/raimohanska/harmaja)
| jhgb wrote:
| I'm mildly surprised that the view rectangle in the "mini-map" in
| the bottom right is not draggable with the usual semantics of
| panning the view. Or at least if it's supposed to work that way,
| it doesn't in my browser.
| nullzzz wrote:
| Yep, that's missing and would make sense. It's an open source
| hobby project so it's bound to have some rough corners :)
| nullzzz wrote:
| This is my open-source project. I use it almost daily for simple
| whiteboarding, notetaking, online whiteboard sessions.
|
| The idea is to have a simple and highly usable, fast alternative
| to more complex software such as Miro or Mural.
| tikwidd wrote:
| This is great, congrats for shipping. It also reminds me a bit
| of Padlet in that there is no freehand drawing and the focus is
| more around connections between objects. Maybe it would be
| better to describe it as a corkboard or pinboard.
|
| I do have some layout issues in Chrome, y is overflowing so I
| get two y-scrollbars.
| asicsp wrote:
| See if you can edit the title of this submission to add `Show
| HN: ` prefix? See https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html for
| details.
|
| Also, perhaps edit your comment with link to the source code.
| nullzzz wrote:
| Done! Src at https://github.com/raimohanska/ourboard
| easygenes wrote:
| Can you comment quickly on what state it's in? What features
| does it support? What does it offer that you wouldn't get with
| Miro or Mural? What are some features you might miss from
| those? Are you still actively developing it? What should we
| expect from it in the next year? Are you looking for
| collaborators?
|
| For instance, something I quickly noticed is that there is no
| freehand drawing, arrows, or connection-building tools
| currently. Are those coming?
| nullzzz wrote:
| Quick overview:
|
| - notes, areas for organizing, a few shapes and colors,
| connectors
|
| - images and videos dragn drop / copypaste
|
| - more on github readme
|
| - not very active development lately. Just today I improved
| on the front page features
|
| - You get a simple and easy board, where other tools may seem
| bloated and complex
| nullzzz wrote:
| No roadmap / plans. Contributions welcome.
|
| You can also self-host this one very easily btw.
| freedomben wrote:
| this no doubt appeals to a certain niche (of which I'm a
| part of), but this (along with open source) is a _massive_
| benefit. Thanks so much!
| mkl wrote:
| There are connection arrows. Click the icon that looks like a
| share button.
| arendtio wrote:
| Congrats for reaching this state. I really like the clean and
| simple interface.
|
| What I am missing are a few more sentences about hosting. I saw
| the documentation about the variables and the commands to host
| a dev environment, but which commands should I use to run it in
| production?
| nullzzz wrote:
| Thanks! May I ask you to open a Github issue on this, and I'm
| sure we can get u up an running. HN isn't a great support
| forum :)
| mkl wrote:
| I think I'm missing something. How do you use it for
| whiteboarding? Where is the pen tool?
|
| Also, is the change log in a working state? I can't seem to
| make it show anything. Is it possible to close it after you've
| opened it?
| nullzzz wrote:
| No pen tool sorry! Change log is not fully functional.
|
| Whiteboarding maybe a bit misleading here. Let's call it a
| sticky note wall, with images and connectors?
| kimchidude wrote:
| So it's a flowchart wall? As the earlier user shared, I
| can't seem to get the wall to do anything either. Sticky
| notes can't be dragged and the text on the site gets cut
| off at the site's edges. I'm on iphone.
| jncraton wrote:
| This looks great. Thanks for sharing!
|
| If folks are interested in this sort of thing, I also maintain an
| _extremely_ minimalist open source whiteboarding tool:
|
| https://github.com/jncraton/box-line-text
| nullzzz wrote:
| Looks cool! Like the super plain appearance and simplicity.
| Would suit to screencasts and quick diagrams, while OurBoard is
| more of a collaboration tool, I'd say.
| jncraton wrote:
| Thanks! The goal is simplicity, so it doesn't attempt feature
| parity with a more comprehensive tool like yours.
| Collaboration features, along with any features that can't be
| implemented on simple static hosting, are out of scope.
|
| I really like the collaborative nature of what you've built.
| I can definitely imagine using this in meetings or group
| planning sessions.
| tyingq wrote:
| The hover text for "note" and "area" both say "drag to add a new
| text note". Then the one for "text" says "drag to add a new text
| area". I'm not sure if that's on purpose, but it's confusing.
| Though all three function in a way that's consistent with their
| respective icon.
|
| Also, on the "area" widget, there's a popup when I click on it,
| with a background color picker and font size choice. But there's
| also an icon with 4 squares arranged 2x2. It's not clear what
| that does.
| nullzzz wrote:
| Thanks for the input, that's highly appreciated! Let's see
| about this soonish. You can also use Github issues at
| https://github.com/raimohanska/ourboard/issues
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| I didn't see a draw function or way to upload an image. For me,
| these are pretty critical in a whiteboard tool.
| nullzzz wrote:
| Images can be drag/dropped or copy pasted onto the board.
| Freeform drawing is not supported.
| butwhywhyoh wrote:
| Title says whiteboard. Can't draw on it. Hmmm.
|
| This is more like a free-form Trello board.
| nullzzz wrote:
| That's a good point. It's definitely not a drawing tool. More
| of an electronic version of post-it notes and images on a
| whiteboard. You can "draw" diagrams using shapes and arrows and
| text, but not freeform. I personally haven't missed freeform
| drawing.
| boothby wrote:
| I work with physicists and circuit designers. To us,
| "whiteboard" is synonymous with freeform drawing...
| nullzzz wrote:
| I come from the software consulting buble. Post it notes
| everywhere.
| remram wrote:
| And it's grey. This is in no way a whiteboard, it's a grey wall
| for post-its.
| indianhippie wrote:
| I have tried quite a few online whiteboards during the pandemic
| WFH. IMHO nothing comes close to https://excalidraw.com
|
| No signup needed, clean interface, fast load times and an option
| to self host makes it an excellent product.
| arendtio wrote:
| I like Excalidraw too, but in my opinion OurBoard has a
| different focus.
|
| - Excalidraw is superb if you want to draw something freestyle.
|
| - Ourboard seems to focus more on creating boxes (notes) which
| you can group and connect. If I understand it correctly, you
| can even load Github issues into your board.
|
| At the start of the pandemic, I searched for Whiteboards where
| I could draw things freestyle (installed MS Whiteboard), but
| over time I noticed, that I used MS Powerpoint most of the
| time, because it was so much better at handling boxes in
| collaborative environments. I think OurBoard could be even
| better at this job.
| reacharavindh wrote:
| Excalidraw is pleasant indeed! Thanks for the introduction :-)
| Stammon wrote:
| Iirc Excalidraw is built on top of Google Firebase. That
| doesn't make it less nice, but imo it shouldn't count as open
| source or self hostable.
| [deleted]
| brightball wrote:
| That looks really sharp! I've been very pleased with Miro for
| corporate use though.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Miro has an interesting learning curve (at least for me). I
| absolutely hated it for the first couple dozen times I used
| it.
|
| Then, there was one meeting where it was particularly
| effective in running a "sticky note" exercise and my opinion
| on it flipped that day from around -7 to +3 [on a -10 to +10
| scale]. It's grown slightly on me since then as well; I might
| be a +5 on it right now.
| brightball wrote:
| We used it to run remote PI Planning and it was very
| effective for that.
| nullzzz wrote:
| It's not mobile friendly at all though
| spzb wrote:
| Even the home page is mangled on my iPhone SE 2nd edition
| nullzzz wrote:
| Especially the home page is a total disaster :( The actual
| board view is read-only usable. This is definitely a fixer.
| Wanna contribute? :)
| codazoda wrote:
| Totally breaks the back button for me
| nullzzz wrote:
| Sorry for that! Could you elaborate on the scenario and your
| setup so we can see what can be done?
| eddieroger wrote:
| Happened to me, too (Safari 14.1.1, macOS 11.4).
|
| Once I went to a board, I could back to the board selection
| screen, but no further, including back to HN. It just doesn't
| go - no errors in the console, but never goes back further.
| Are you doing something with the browser's history?
| nullzzz wrote:
| Okay this is good info, thanks! Created an Issue here:
| https://github.com/raimohanska/ourboard/issues/160
|
| It's a single-page app so to support in-app navigation
| (back button etc) it needs to interact with the browser's
| History API.
| ianberdin wrote:
| Looks cool, unfortunately Figma already did the perfect solution
| called FigJam and it's absolutely awesome and free.
| nullzzz wrote:
| Why would that be unfortunate, it sounds awesome! Gotta give it
| a try.
| thecodrr wrote:
| There's a bug that hijacks your back button. At least on mobile.
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(page generated 2021-10-09 23:01 UTC)