stick figures wanted
May 12, 2010 1:05 PM Subscribe
I'm trying to make a web-based app that involves, among other things, letting the user draw a simple sketch. These do *not* need to be high quality sketches - I'm talking a paintbrush function at minimum, and a sort of pared down microsoft paint (draw circles! straight lines! spray paint!) at most. Is this doable?
If it is doable - how should I go about this? How hard would it be to code from scratch? Or is there stuff already out there that I could use for my own commercial purposes?
If it is doable - how should I go about this? How hard would it be to code from scratch? Or is there stuff already out there that I could use for my own commercial purposes?
You'll need to make a decision based on what browsers you want to support. The canvas tag is not supported by Internet Explorer, and so will severely limit your audience. If your app needs the widest possible user base, you might want to consider Flash instead.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 1:16 PM on May 12, 2010
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 1:16 PM on May 12, 2010
Response by poster: I don't have Flash professional on my computer - is that going to limit my ability to do this in flash, or is there a way around that?
posted by shaun uh at 1:22 PM on May 12, 2010
posted by shaun uh at 1:22 PM on May 12, 2010
The Flex SDK will allow you to develop in Flash for free, assuming you have the programming/command-line chops to do so in pure ActionScript 3.0, without the Flash CSwhatever interface.
opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/
posted by pengale at 1:27 PM on May 12, 2010
opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/
posted by pengale at 1:27 PM on May 12, 2010
you might get some good ideas from how they did the 'Sheepmarket'
posted by bottlebrushtree at 2:06 PM on May 12, 2010
posted by bottlebrushtree at 2:06 PM on May 12, 2010
The sadly-defunct Broken Picture Telephone had this functionality, and I believe it used Shockwave.
On a related note, if someone would recreate BPT, I would pay for it!
posted by Joh at 2:16 PM on May 12, 2010
On a related note, if someone would recreate BPT, I would pay for it!
posted by Joh at 2:16 PM on May 12, 2010
Harmony is a javascript/canvas doodle toy featured here on the blue previously. It shouldn't be too hard to figure out what it's doing.
posted by chairface at 2:47 PM on May 12, 2010
posted by chairface at 2:47 PM on May 12, 2010
Also: http://www.chromeexperiments.com/detail/canvas-sketch/
posted by miniape at 2:56 PM on May 12, 2010
posted by miniape at 2:56 PM on May 12, 2010
Best answer: Nthing JS and Canvas. Lack of canvas support in IE actually isn't that big a deal; several emulation libraries exist that let you write Canvas code and have it transparently get translated into one of VML (IE's proprietary vector graphics format), Silverlight, or Flash. ExCanvas is the best-known: http://code.google.com/p/explorercanvas/.
posted by andrewpendleton at 9:07 PM on May 12, 2010
posted by andrewpendleton at 9:07 PM on May 12, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by idiopath at 1:08 PM on May 12, 2010