Looking for a web app to allow my users to draw

December 29, 2004 1:39 PM

Seeking: a web drawing applet that can save files to a server. [more inside]

I'm working on a project wherein I'd like visitors to my site to be able to make quick sketches and click a "save" button to save it to my server space. The simpler, the better — one-color line drawings are preferred, and I'd hope to have the files saved in numerical sequence or via a supplied ID (rather than giving the users any choice in the matter). I'm hoping said script will be free. Flash or Java are fine. The backend will be managed via PHP/MySQL. Googling has gotten me nowhere — anyone know of such an applet?

posted by rafter to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

This is a very simple java applet, but still may be more than what you're after. Click on Sample 2 to see it in action, with the save option. Maybe you can modify it.
posted by iconomy at 1:56 PM on December 29, 2004

shi-chan paintbbs is quite popular in certain art communities.
posted by philscience at 2:10 PM on December 29, 2004

I always thought this was particularly cool: TWikiDrawPlugin.

It's based on JHotDraw.
posted by AmaAyeRrsOonN at 2:22 PM on December 29, 2004

Groupboard sounds like what you're looking for. It's fun, easy and saves to their server.
posted by kamylyon at 9:54 PM on December 29, 2004

Thanks, all, for the answers. Iconomy's post is the most similar to what I'm looking for — a little complex maybe, but definitely doable — except that it seems to require JSP or ASP to save. (My host only has PHP server-side.)

The single-user Groupboard would actually be near-perfect, except I really want to manage the files on my own server (plus their free account apparently has a cap on number of saved files).

Thanks, though. I was really counting on their being something like this out there — maybe I'll have to learn Java and do it myself.
posted by rafter at 11:46 PM on December 29, 2004

I did find one that's elegantly simple, rafter, but from what's shown there, you can't save it. Click on "Scribble". Is that more like what you want? Check this thread later - a friend who knows of a simple flash drawing app said he'd email me the link.
posted by iconomy at 4:39 AM on December 30, 2004

Two flash apps: Here's one very simple one, again, I don't know if you can save. Click on 640 x 480 or another size, to see it. This one is more than you need, but is probably easily altered, and has a save option. It's a drawing aplication with Flash-PHP-MySQL. The drawings are editable, and can be saved to local disk or in a MySQL DB. You may want to register at the flashkit forum and pose your question to the people there - I'm sure one of them will know exactly where to find a flash app that'll be exactly what you're after.
posted by iconomy at 5:58 AM on December 30, 2004

Thanks again, iconomy. The one that saves to PHP/MySQL is a bit much, but the various scripts on FlashKit present a pretty good lead. I registered for the FlashKit forums and hopefully they'll be able to help me out.
posted by rafter at 11:37 AM on December 30, 2004