Its been a couple months since I released RichDraw. At the time I was looking around at the state of browser-based drawing and diagraming tools. Most were Java or ActiveX based. Now, I am finding lots of pure Javascript API’s and tools.
There also seems to be more of a push to create API’s, making it easier to create cross-browser applications. Each browser seems to support a slightly different technology. Even when they overlap, browser implementations are not always interoperable. Javascript wrappers are a big help.
Here are some Javascript libraries focused on cross-browser drawing:
Here are some neat browser-based drawing applications:
- Whiteboard – A little colaborative whiteboard experiment. Uses the Dojo.gfx toolkit to do the rendering.
- Paintr – A weekend project by Anne van Kesteren. Uses
<canvas/>suppport to do the rendering. - Draw – Has the makings of a full-blown flowcharting tool. Many shape types and support for connectors. Currently IE only, but since it is built on RichDraw, Firefox and Opera could be supported as well.
- XDraw – Gavin Doughtie’s early work that may have started the Dojo.gfx toolkit.
Not an exhaustive list, but at least some evidence that drawing in a browser is getting serious.