Online whiteboard
I got this idea about a website with online whiteboard capability. I went googling to find out if there is something good out there before reinventing the wheel. Here are some experiences:
Skribl
http://www.skrbl.com/
Skribls looks very promising, but it does not deliver. It seems to
have some bugs: I cannot change the color when drawing lines and I
don’t see any tool to erase. Also, I don’t see any way to quickly
clear the board. Maybe the problem is in browser support, I don’t
know. I’m using Firefox 3.5 which is really as standard as you can get
today.
Scriblink
http://www.scriblink.com/
Main drawback is that it requires Java, and if you don’t have it
installed or enabled, it would just sit there with it’s progress bar
running. I thought something was broken with their website after
nothing go loaded in 15 minutes. It turns out Java was disabled in my
browser. They could put a simple detection with “please enable Java”
message. Functionality isn’t great either. Interface is well thought
off, but many things just don’t work right. Drawing a free-hand line
is not as nearly as smooth as in Skribl, so what you really get is a
lot of short straight lines and corners. One big problem is also that
their code runs my CPU at 100% all the time - even when focus is not
on the browser window. Tool for erasing is easily accessible, but it
does not work well - trying to erase a single straight line can take
quite an effort.
Dabbleboard
http://dabbleboard.com/
So far, a clear winner. It uses Flash, and works very well. Freehand
drawing is pretty good, adding text is as simple as click&type.
Drawing shapes, adding images and files and integrated chat. What more
could one wish for. Also, the price for the features I need (i.e.
free) is hard to beat. I only used it a couple of minutes, but if we
assume there are no serious bugs hidden in it - this looks like The
Real Thing(tm).
Please add a comment if you know of another good online whiteboard
(esp. if it does not use Flash but DHTML - because not all computers
have flash installed).