Dabbleboard - The official blog

We released some useful features yesterday:

1. Text chat: It’s pretty barebones at the moment but we’ll be improving it.
2. Voice and video chat from Tokbox: You could always fire up your favorite chat client, but it just makes things a little easier if you can do everything on the same webpage.
3. Access through firewalls: Now real-time collaboration works through any type of firewall with no configuration needed. (Technical background: we were using a Flash socket earlier but are now using Comet.)

We had a few false starts getting the firewall access working, since it needed an overhaul of our server infrastructure. You may have noticed some issues yesterday; sorry about that. Things look pretty smooth now, but please let us know if you notice any issues.

What’s next? We’re working on features for Pro accounts. Don’t worry, the free version will have at least the same features as today, and we’ll continue improving it as well. If you’re interested in the Pro version, or have ideas for features for it, please let us know.

We released a redesign a couple of days ago. The new design is much cleaner and less obtrusive. Hope you like it. We included some minor bugfixes and features as well. As always, let us know in the comments what more you’d like to see in Dabbleboard.

The bigger deal: we released our Developer API today. It’s no accident that we’ve released it at the same time as the redesign; we wanted to make the design more subtle so it could easily integrate with your service. Many of you, who are developers or entrepreneurs yourself, have asked for this API. It’s finally here and we hope it will enhance your services and offer more value to your users. Please give us feedback, or let us know if you need any help using it.

We’ve added a new Examples page and a Toolkits page.

A toolkit is just a bunch of drawings that have been made public; they are no different from drawings you or any other user can make on Dabbleboard.

Toolkits we just added:

• Shapes (that aren’t auto-detected)
• Networking
• User Interface
• Electrical Engineering
• Floorplan
• Comics
• Sports

If you have ideas for new toolkits or drawings, or would like us to include your drawings in our toolkits, please let us know in the comments.

We know some of you have been waiting for these.

1. Resizable canvas. There’s a new Settings button at the top right corner that has the option (along with options for the grid); the canvas can be made much bigger than the browser window too.
2. Rotate and flip. Make a selection to reveal the floating buttons.
3. Properties panel for power-users to enter dimensions. Make a selection, then type Enter or click the floating button to invoke it. Goes great with the grid.
4. Search. Both in the library pane, as well as in the public library.

Enjoy!

We’ve revamped our sharing interface. Now you can just copy the secure URL and paste in your favorite IM client, in addition to emailing it.

And, due to popular demand, now you can share drawings without having to sign up or log in. You still need to sign up to save your drawings, so you can access them anytime and from anywhere, and to reuse them in other drawings.

Lots of other changes under the hood. A few features that you may appreciate:

• More flexible text, with movable cursor and copy-paste support.
• Snap-to-grid. Hold the Alt key to snap to a 10×10 grid while drawing, moving or scaling.
• New theme for the blog :).

We released some much-requested features a little more than a week ago. Our upgrade even got press coverage at Inquisitr. If you haven’t noticed yet, we added:

1. Ability to embed images. Embedded images work like any other objects in terms of moving/scaling/replication/etc.
2. Auto-detection of curved lines. Not only makes some types of drawings like flowcharts easier, but also lets you make complex shapes by grouping straight lines and bezier curves.
3. Auto-detection of diamonds and triangles.
4. Ability to embed Dabbleboard drawings in your blog or website.
5. Updated look-and-feel throughout the website.

We have lots more planned, but we’d love to hear from you in the comments about what you’d like to see in the next release of Dabbleboard.