Resizable canvas, rotate, and search

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!

Posted in New release.

6 Responses to “Resizable canvas, rotate, and search”

  1. Ian Says:

    All very cool. You must be having mucho fun doing this!

    Feature request: even in Freehand mode, smooth the drawn lines a little bit. This is not (IMHO) a tool for artists who need fine control. It’s for geeks like me who just want to draw with the mouse and not have it look crap.

    Yeah, I know I said ‘ignore feature requests’….

  2. zhyder Says:

    Ian, we’ll always have a completely freehand mode; lots of users need it, and I’m sure you would need it at times too. We could conceivably add a third mode for smooth freehand though.

    P.S. we do a small amount of unobtrusive smoothing already. Trying drawing the same thing in MS Paint for comparison.

  3. cross Says:

    very nice and useful site here.. great features for online discussions.

    couple of suggestions from me for better use..
    1- Ability to add pictures as backgroud or fixing images. People click on the image and move it by mistake alot if not fixed.

    2- Re freehand..its good. Only add automatic arrow-head at the end when one clicks on the arrow button. Arrow head is the hardest to draw and it can look really ugly.

    3- Auto-line/curve…not a must but would be really good if you can add 2 more curvature control points if above a certain length.

    Hope these make sense…wonderful tool. Keep up the good work.

    cheers.

  4. zhyder Says:

    cross, thanks for the suggestions. I’m not sure I agree on some of your points:

    1. Maybe we should just make it harder to move images, so you must use the move handle at the top-left corner or the blue border. (Edit: just pushed this out)
    2. I assume if you’re drawing freehand, you’d want to draw the arrow-head freehand as well. Freehand mode really isn’t for arrows.
    3. Each curve is a quadratic bezier curve, so it has a single control point. To make complex curves (like a sine wave), you’d need to draw more curves.

  5. stephen Says:

    loving the re-sizeable canvas, but is it possible to have the canvas size recognise when it’s too small? otherwise, you wind up re-sizing the canvas every time you access a “board” you’ve created on a bigger canvas.

    what are you calling each individual drawing? a dabble? a board?

  6. zhyder Says:

    stephen, we call an individual drawing just a “drawing” :).

    We’ve thought about automatically expanding the canvas but it can also be jarring if you’re switching back-and-forth between drawings. But we could probably improve the canvas resizing interface to help with your problem.

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