warning: this project still under major development, and it is not production ready yet.
This open source project aims to build an web-based collaborative whiteboard.
It will not require the installation of any plugins, or have any form of user management.
While it is primarily a productivity tool, it is also a test-bed for Graft and jschan
This project was founded by Adrian Rossouw (a co-founder of the Graft project), after an international business trip to the Wayfinder offices.
He realized that the most valuable use of that time was being able to stand around a whiteboard with his team members, evaluating and exploring solutions and system designs.
Unhappy with the options available, he decided to scratch his own itch, and build the tool he really needed.
He chose the name AetherBoard because it was designed as a sort of companion app to the erstwhile EtherPad (which was eventually absorbed into Google Wave).
You should be able to load up the app in any modern browser and get a new whiteboard hosted on a randomly generated url.
You can then share this URL freely with anybody you want to collaborate with.
You will be able to zoom in and out, and pan around the white board surface, and anything you write or draw on the board will be shared to everybody connected to the same board.
Mice do not make the greatest input devices for drawing programs like this. It is highly recommended to use your tablet or mobile phone, and get yourself a touch screen stylus. They are very inexpensive and widely available, but you can still use your finger in a pinch.
You could also open up the whiteboard on your desktop, or perhaps the projector/monitor in your office when you are collaborating with remote team members in a meeting. The zoomed out view will give you the full picture.
Since this is a simple web page, it will be easily embeddable in any other site using an iframe.
Each board will also be embeddable as a simple PNG file which will always point to the current state of the board. This image can be attached to emails, or posted to an internal issue queue, or whatever.
####Installation
npm install -g webpack webpack-dev-server # First install webpack
git clone https://github.com/AetherBoard/AetherBoard
rm -rf .git # optionally remove git history
npm install # install dependencies ####Development
Run the dev server with webpack-dev-server
Go to the dev server url : http://localhost:8080/webpack-dev-server/dist/bundle
####Production
Build the deployable static assets with webpack