I repeated the experiment on my Galaxy Note 8 with its active pen, with similar results on both sites (not included in the images above). Witeboard completely failed, while Ziteboard rendered my handwriting as expected.
I also tried conventional touchscreen/TrackPoint/touchpad input on both devices to make sure it wasn't an issue with the active pen, but the results were again the same.
As one last test, I connected a mouse to the ThinkPad and tried both sites. Witeboard worked a little better with this pointing device: it mostly kept up but did have a lot of straight lines and sharp angles when I tried to draw scribbly circular patterns. Ziteboard again performed perfectly.
I have no affiliation or prior knowledge of either of these sites, I am just reporting my experience in a quick test of each.
1. Does it keep up with rapid movement? (If something fails this, it’s a total non-starter.)
2. Does the eraser on the back of my pen work? (If not, it’s very frustrating and a very bad sign.)
3. Does pressure sensitivity vary the thickness of lines? (I just find it’s a bad sign if something lacks this—tools that support pressure sensitivity seem to pretty consistently be far better than tools that don’t.)
Witeboard fails all three, badly. So no way am I ever going to use it.
Ziteboard is a bit better at #1 (though still not good), but fails #2 and #3 and has hideous latency and accuracy as well—it’s postprocessing strokes heavily, which makes sense for mouse but shouldn’t be done either at all or as much for a pen. So I’m not going to use Ziteboard either, it’s unpleasant to use.
Browserboard is the worst of the three: hideous latency, terrible accuracy, missing the start and end of each stroke, and fails all three.
I’m using Firefox on Windows on a Surface Book. I know much better is possible, because I wrote a simple, local, pressure-sensitive drawing tool some years back (in the early days of pointer events), and it worked just about as well as local apps like Microsoft Whiteboard or Krita or GIMP do. All three of these tools just seem to be making rookie errors like doing too much processing probably on the main thread, and skipping coalesced events. (Those are my guesses of the problems, as a developer that has dealt with this space.) None of them are good; Ziteboard is merely the least terrible.
Contrarily to the other mentioned before, it is opensource [1], and you can easily host your own instance if you don't like the idea of sharing your whiteboards on a random server on the internet.
I'm not sure why this is being downvoted. I had a similar experience. Witeboard seems to have trouble with curves. Trying to draw an "o" would invariably result in geometric shapes, a perfect circle, or some sort of rectangle. I was experiencing a lot of latency as well, which only aggravated the situation.
While you're trying things out, would you mind testing https://browserboard.com? It's a little thing I made similar to these tools. It's not commercial, I just want to make sure it works well.
How do you like your ThinkPad Yoga for note taking? I'm thinking if to get something like this or Samsung tablet for pdf reading and annotation writing notes on pdf for learning what do you think?
Oh wow, ziteboard has a feature I’ve been looking for for ages: vector graphics rather that pixel graphics. You can zoom in indefinitely, making nested notes and annotations possible!
Sorry if this was already suggested. Make sure you fix that load time asap so you don't lose any potential users prior to the screen being interactive. A quick hack might be to simply display a quick overlay dressed up like a landing page with a short description and have it load behind that until some CTA is pressed. That may prevent anyone from thinking the link is broke or whatever.
As for the widget, I enjoy seeing the trend lately. It's nothing innovative, but is starting conversations on how remote workers have more options to incorporate similar things into our workflow. Great job!
I love that this exist, but the core problem with remote whiteboards is that everyone can write something legible when using a marker on a whiteboard, but it's way harder with a mouse/trackpad.
It would be nice to have some features that made it easier - the features I really miss from apps I use to create diagrams are basic shapes like rectangles and the ability to select and move/resize/copy existing drawing.
You can get a decent little drawing tablet for $30 these days. You'd probably spend half of that in the cost of pens over the device's lifetime. They're no longer ultra-expensive specialized equipment.
> I love that this exist, but the core problem with remote whiteboards is that everyone can write something legible when using a marker on a whiteboard, but it's way harder with a mouse/trackpad.
I'm actually experimenting with that with my side project Doodledocs [1], that feature isn't live yet, though. Also, for the user, one thing I found is that if you hold a large paperclip in your hand like it's a pencil, you can make easier writing motions on a trackpad. I do this when I'm using my Macbook instead of my iPad.
[1] https://doodledocs.com is basically Witeboard but with a less pretty and more buggy interface :P (I wrote it last year as a side project)
Online whiteboards are just awful with a mouse, what's worked really well for my livestreams has been a WACOM like tablet that I can hook up via USB to my laptop or Desktop.
I use it to annotate pdfs and also with the MS whiteboard, it's not necessarily the best to collaborate with but I really like how I can zoom infinitely out to keep adding stuff. I prefer this setup over regular whiteboards for solo brainstorming sessions
Two minor suggestions. (1) when you enable "blackboard mode", the cursor should become white. As it is, the cursor is very hard to see on the blackboard. (2) it honestly took me a while to figure out that you can share just by sharing the link. Maybe make that clearer somehow?
I have tried to use various similar applications and the experience was overwhelmingly negative (due to limitations of mouse-based control). Thus, I'm considering getting an inexpensive graphics drawing tablet purely for ideation, note making, document annotation, and IT architectural diagramming (not for graphics design or digital painting!). A brief research narrowed down my choices to XP-Pen Deco 01 V2, Huion H610 Pro V2 and GAOMON M10K 2018 models (GAOMON and Huion are reported to be using the same [Huion's] driver).
One thing that I'd like to know is whether one of these models has any significant advantages versus the two others? For example, I suspect that a touch ring on GAOMON might be much easier / more natural / more reliable to use than two-button zoom design on Huion and even more so than assignable buttons on XP-Pen. Another - and much more important - question is security and privacy. My concern is whether these (or any other similar devices, for that matter) send any private user information to their manufacturers (would denying relevant firewall prompts be enough? if so, would that be a problem from the driver update and/or other functionality perspective?). Finally, I'm curious about potential differences between these models in terms of their support for non-mainstream applications, e.g., Miro and ArchiMate. I would appreciate sharing your thoughts on this.
A good remote whiteboard is surely missed in these times of remote work and isolation. But I begin to doubt that is possible to create something for regular computers that can fully replace the interaction and creativity that you can have with a colleague at a real whiteboard. Something about the size I think. It is not legible to draw as much on a screen as on a whiteboard and if you need to zoom and stuff the case is already lost.
It seems at least mostly on topic to share here this thing I released a little over a year ago: https://www.swapadoodle.com
It's definitely not useful for the same things, but it has a lot of similarities and seems potentially interesting as something to compare and contrast with this.
Google has not much known product in google docs suite, called jamboard which works really well for this usecase and has tablet apps which makes it very good to use with apple pencil.
Benefits over this include better tools, better sharing and security, and I am guess stability and scalability.
Very cool product, please keep at it. Feedback: scrolling feels tedious. Please allow holding space key + mouse click and drag to move around the board (similar to how most design tools handle this).
Crash my lubuntu 18.04 session every time, when using firefox 80.0.1 (works fine with chromium though), Nvidia-driver 450.51.06, after waiting to load the screen goes black and blinks a few time.
Tested on my Dell Latitude 5290 2-in-1 (AKA. my sidearm), with Dell's active pen, running Firefox.
Looks sleek, initially seemed to work fine with pen drawing. That was until I touched the screen with my palm. Then all hell broke loose - the app got stuck imagining there are some input events happening in the middle of the screen, so every attempt at drawing created a squiggly mess - every nth point dropped by my pen got connected with an imaginary point in the middle of the screen, and then back to my drawing.
I like the simplicity very much! It can be already useful. One thing is missing though; showing the zoom level. It is very necessary when more than 6 people try to write lots of things.
Neat. A bug report: after about 15 seconds of use, I got a little "You are disconnected" warning. It disappeared almost immediately, clearing the whole thing.
I miss uploading images and PDFs that I can "lock" and write on top. Ziteboard does it, but it is expensive and also when someone zooms everyone is zoomed, which kind of sucks. Jamboard is also bad at writing on background images. We do need a good whiteboard app with a simple share indeed for classes.
[+] [-] Stratoscope|5 years ago|reply
Out of curiosity, I tried ziteboard.com (which came up in a search for "online whiteboard"), and it rendered my handwriting perfectly.
Here are the results from the two sites:
https://imgur.com/a/nCKMEKE
I repeated the experiment on my Galaxy Note 8 with its active pen, with similar results on both sites (not included in the images above). Witeboard completely failed, while Ziteboard rendered my handwriting as expected.
I also tried conventional touchscreen/TrackPoint/touchpad input on both devices to make sure it wasn't an issue with the active pen, but the results were again the same.
As one last test, I connected a mouse to the ThinkPad and tried both sites. Witeboard worked a little better with this pointing device: it mostly kept up but did have a lot of straight lines and sharp angles when I tried to draw scribbly circular patterns. Ziteboard again performed perfectly.
I have no affiliation or prior knowledge of either of these sites, I am just reporting my experience in a quick test of each.
[+] [-] chrismorgan|5 years ago|reply
1. Does it keep up with rapid movement? (If something fails this, it’s a total non-starter.)
2. Does the eraser on the back of my pen work? (If not, it’s very frustrating and a very bad sign.)
3. Does pressure sensitivity vary the thickness of lines? (I just find it’s a bad sign if something lacks this—tools that support pressure sensitivity seem to pretty consistently be far better than tools that don’t.)
Witeboard fails all three, badly. So no way am I ever going to use it.
Ziteboard is a bit better at #1 (though still not good), but fails #2 and #3 and has hideous latency and accuracy as well—it’s postprocessing strokes heavily, which makes sense for mouse but shouldn’t be done either at all or as much for a pen. So I’m not going to use Ziteboard either, it’s unpleasant to use.
Browserboard is the worst of the three: hideous latency, terrible accuracy, missing the start and end of each stroke, and fails all three.
I’m using Firefox on Windows on a Surface Book. I know much better is possible, because I wrote a simple, local, pressure-sensitive drawing tool some years back (in the early days of pointer events), and it worked just about as well as local apps like Microsoft Whiteboard or Krita or GIMP do. All three of these tools just seem to be making rookie errors like doing too much processing probably on the main thread, and skipping coalesced events. (Those are my guesses of the problems, as a developer that has dealt with this space.) None of them are good; Ziteboard is merely the least terrible.
[+] [-] lovasoa|5 years ago|reply
Contrarily to the other mentioned before, it is opensource [1], and you can easily host your own instance if you don't like the idea of sharing your whiteboards on a random server on the internet.
[1] https://github.com/lovasoa/whitebophir
[+] [-] brbsix|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] irskep|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomerbd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ComodoHacker|5 years ago|reply
Could it be because of their feature called "shape detection"? It's on by default, you can turn it off in the menu.
[+] [-] ianhorn|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chris_st|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jayd16|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duoboard|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dgellow|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coding-saints|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Diesel555|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] solidasparagus|5 years ago|reply
It would be nice to have some features that made it easier - the features I really miss from apps I use to create diagrams are basic shapes like rectangles and the ability to select and move/resize/copy existing drawing.
Witeboard is great name BTW.
[+] [-] zuhayeer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monoideism|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThePadawan|5 years ago|reply
Are you hiring?
(Just kidding, but I seriously wish that were true.)
[+] [-] agrafix|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] melvinroest|5 years ago|reply
I'm actually experimenting with that with my side project Doodledocs [1], that feature isn't live yet, though. Also, for the user, one thing I found is that if you hold a large paperclip in your hand like it's a pencil, you can make easier writing motions on a trackpad. I do this when I'm using my Macbook instead of my iPad.
[1] https://doodledocs.com is basically Witeboard but with a less pretty and more buggy interface :P (I wrote it last year as a side project)
[+] [-] cortesoft|5 years ago|reply
You have obviously never seen my handwriting.
I am even worse on a computer with my mouse, though.
[+] [-] charles_f|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] formalsystem|5 years ago|reply
I got this, it's cheap and great https://www.amazon.com/GAOMON-M10K2018-Graphic-Pressure-Batt...
I use it to annotate pdfs and also with the MS whiteboard, it's not necessarily the best to collaborate with but I really like how I can zoom infinitely out to keep adding stuff. I prefer this setup over regular whiteboards for solo brainstorming sessions
[+] [-] creata|5 years ago|reply
Two minor suggestions. (1) when you enable "blackboard mode", the cursor should become white. As it is, the cursor is very hard to see on the blackboard. (2) it honestly took me a while to figure out that you can share just by sharing the link. Maybe make that clearer somehow?
[+] [-] ablekh|5 years ago|reply
One thing that I'd like to know is whether one of these models has any significant advantages versus the two others? For example, I suspect that a touch ring on GAOMON might be much easier / more natural / more reliable to use than two-button zoom design on Huion and even more so than assignable buttons on XP-Pen. Another - and much more important - question is security and privacy. My concern is whether these (or any other similar devices, for that matter) send any private user information to their manufacturers (would denying relevant firewall prompts be enough? if so, would that be a problem from the driver update and/or other functionality perspective?). Finally, I'm curious about potential differences between these models in terms of their support for non-mainstream applications, e.g., Miro and ArchiMate. I would appreciate sharing your thoughts on this.
[+] [-] syspec|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mongol|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darshan|5 years ago|reply
It's definitely not useful for the same things, but it has a lot of similarities and seems potentially interesting as something to compare and contrast with this.
[+] [-] CodeAid|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] YetAnotherNick|5 years ago|reply
Benefits over this include better tools, better sharing and security, and I am guess stability and scalability.
[+] [-] jansen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GistNoesis|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mettamage|5 years ago|reply
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/witeboard
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|5 years ago|reply
Looks sleek, initially seemed to work fine with pen drawing. That was until I touched the screen with my palm. Then all hell broke loose - the app got stuck imagining there are some input events happening in the middle of the screen, so every attempt at drawing created a squiggly mess - every nth point dropped by my pen got connected with an imaginary point in the middle of the screen, and then back to my drawing.
[+] [-] kissgyorgy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshxyz|5 years ago|reply
https://witeboard.com/02902930-064e-11eb-bc00-27b189d22b71
[+] [-] joshxyz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kristiandupont|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DoctorOW|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lweber|5 years ago|reply
I tried 2 times. Won't use again.
[+] [-] Frauber84|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] senko|5 years ago|reply