melvinroest

doodledocs

JavaScript2019–2023

melvinroest / doodledocs

doodledocs

An app for collaborative doodling via a p2p library called Bugout with RoR websocket bindings as fallback

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3Distinct people

7Mentions

0Explicit recommenders

14GitHub stars

REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

An app for collaborative doodling via a p2p library called Bugout with RoR websocket bindings as fallback

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

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Also in these discussions

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This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year7 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2019-10-30 17:09:22 UTC to 2023-12-17 04:18:43 UTC.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges

UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
Period	Start (UTC)	End (exclusive, UTC)	Mentions	Comments
2019	2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	1
2020	2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	4	4
2021	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0
2022	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0
2023	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2	2

What Hacker News says

7 sources

melvinroest·Dec 17, 2023

Reminds me a bit of what I once made: doodledocs. It's offline, but the idea was to built a collaborative space for styluses that were pressure sensitive. I was also using the idea of the web as "remixable" and more as a document. Annotating the web with a stylus :) It was a show HN at one point but it never really got traction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhrNl-fRrC8 https://github.com/melvinroest/doodledocs

In Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

melvinroest·Jul 26, 2023

I can confirm. I once created a project called Doodledocs. The reason was because I (still!) haven't seen a project that showed pen styluses pressure sensitivity in a web app. So I whipped up a collaborative drawing app where pressure sensitivity of the stylus was captured (if the stylus was capable of it). In the beginning of my career I did 100s of job interviews. However, in this case I only did a few and I'm sure I got the job because of it. Also, it was a lot of fun to try and create backend style type of functionality only by utilizing peer to peer! The hacking and reasoning required felt novel and fun. The project is here (it is currently not live): https://github.com/melvinroest/doodledocs

In It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

mkl·Jun 16, 2020

PointerEvents: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Pointer_eve... They are pretty easy to use, but most online whiteboards don't bother. Perhaps the developers don't have suitable hardware? The only pressure sensitive one I've seen is https://github.com/melvinroest/doodledocs, which is ... not very polished yet.

In Excalidraw whiteboard – easily sketch diagrams with a hand-drawn feel

asadlionpk·Jun 15, 2020

The relevant part: https://github.com/melvinroest/doodledocs/blob/master/app/co...

In Excalidraw whiteboard – easily sketch diagrams with a hand-drawn feel

melvinroest·Jun 15, 2020

When using the stylus, it doesn't support pressure sensitivity (I just tried with my Wacom). I created doodledocs.com as a side project, which does support it (and almost doesn't support anything else :P). The code is open source and also purely front-end based. So the Excalidraw authors can see how it could be implemented. It's basically Bresenham's algorithm combined with the DOM API. The code is at https://github.com/melvinroest/doodledocs/tree/master/app/co...

In Excalidraw whiteboard – easily sketch diagrams with a hand-drawn feel

melvinroest·Apr 17, 2020

Hey HN! I'm reposting this due to the unfortunate situation that we're in right now. The reason I came up with it now is because of this post [1]. It made me realize for the first time that this project might be more beneficial than usual during these times. Doodledocs.com is an open-source [2] frontend web app that establishes a peer to peer connection for your stylus data. The idea is to draw together and/or annotate on websites together. It's a proof of concept. Not a lot seems to be happening in this space, considering that this particular app has features that things like Google Jamboard doesn't have (e.g. pressure sensitivity, website annotation). But using a stylus on web pages gives the idea of a "web document" a whole different meaning. We can treat web pages a lot more like paper and I think we should in certain cases. Free form

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drawing/writing is sometimes the most powerful tool of expression there is. Anyways, if you happen to be unable to draw together with someone due to the lockdown, now you can! The only limitation is that it can't punch through corporate firewalls unfortunately (hosting it for free at the moment, currently not paying for a TURN server). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22894407 [2] https://github.com/melvinroest/doodledocs

In Show HN: Doodledocs.com Draw Together with a Stylus

melvinroest·Oct 30, 2019

Bret Victor wrote an amazing essay on interaction design in 2011 [1]. After reading it, I thought "we should doodlify the web a lot more." A keyboard and mouse, while useful, are restricting in odd ways. Bret Victor explains in his essay how this is restricting, and what the way forward could be. My contribution to it is simple and humble and definitely just a small step compared to Bret Victor his vision. I present Doodledocs: collaborative drawing, cross-device, stylus pressure-sensitive first, mouse + keyboard a distant second. Doesn't this exist? Well, I've seen collaborative drawing that did not have web annotation or pressure sensitivity (e.g. Google Jamboard). And in the best cases where I did see most of these things (e.g. Inko [4, video]), they were native apps which locks you into an ecosystem. I want things to be open and free.

Read the rest

And I want pressure sensitivity, collaborative drawing and web annotation into one place as the web could then feel like paper that we can draw on, together. You don't have to. But you can! :-D So, in my opinion, something such as Doodledocs doesn't exist. Here is a video of me using it on an iPad [2]. I also tested it on a Wacom connected to a laptop. It's a bit buggy still (cross-browser compatibility/cross-device issues, I'm testing as much as I can nowadays). So I hope seeing me how I use it will show you how to deal with the slightly buggy situations :) Oh, and it's all pure frontend <3 (with some P2P magic which is still only frontend :D). Who needs a backend anyways? ;-) The code is on Github [3]. And it's free. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21116948 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhrNl-fRrC8 Summary of features + timestamps: 00:31 - pencil usage 00:40 - eraser usage 01:00 - color 01:30 - opacity (this allows you to get a more pencil-like or pen-like feel) 02:20 - Zooming in (menu zooming with you is an iPad feature only) 02:40 - Download your doodle 03:15 - Upload your doodle (and continue from where you left off) 04:00 - Share your doodle (i.e. collaborate together by sending the link to someone else) 05:00 - Scroll vs. draw mode (if you're in draw mode you can't scroll with your pencil but you can scrub with your fingers) 05:50 - Image annotation example (an image from Unsplash by Andreea Popa -- https://unsplash.com/@elfcodobelf) 07:00 - Skip this part (here I am done with the website annotation example and fumbling around) 07:50 - Make website or image transparent (handy for tracing drawings, websites or pictures) -- also an example of me having fun with the app 11:00 - Website annotation example (using unsplash.com) 12:45 - Hacker News annotation example (same thing as 11:00, I'm a fan of this site :) ) 13:00 - Going back to a blank canvas (leave the URL bar empty) [3] https://github.com/melvinroest/doodledocs [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdjPVYxUhJw

In Show HN: Doodledocs – draw on a blank canvas or annotate websites together