Discoveries like kinopio.club is precisely why I find myself browsing HN every morning. This is incredible! It is now going to take over the world, and I don't think it was meant to.
<offtopic> This reminds me. For quite some time, I've been thinking about how the "infinite canvas" concept could be applied to a browser navigation (replacing tabs, history and bookmarks). Something like "tab overview" in Safari, but instead of just currently opened tabs, it takes you to an infinite canvas of tabs. </offtopic>
I think the issue is that the computer does not have infinite resources. Even with tabs where they are hidden most of the time it's a big engineering challenge. If you can zoom out and expect all activities to continue in the iframes.. it can work but there is just a limit.
But besides the infinite thing, I had kind of the same idea last week when I was looking for a mind mapping tool that I could just embed web pages in.
Re infinite,
Kinopio also uses tricks like this where the <canvas> you paint on is only viewport sized but moves when you scroll to give the illusion that it covers the page.
That said, as cool as infinite sounds, you might not even want that irl.
Truely infinite space, like in real life, is harder to find things in, and the content is likely less focused on a single topic, and therefore harder for a human to parse.
(That said, I’m the kind of browser tab user to starts closing things after I get to like 10)
I wouldn’t focus that much on the word “infinite.” It’s more like “unbounded” or even just “big enough that you’re exceedingly unlikely to run out of space.”
Not totally related, but something like kinopio + spreadsheet would be pretty neat.
So often I find myself annoyed in Google Sheets that I either have to section off some subset of cells for some sub calculation or move that sub calculation onto another sheet.
I would love to have resizable independent tables/speadsheets inside cells on an infinite canvas like this that I could connect together.
I assume people can do that. That’s how it works with any free/freemium SaaS tier though. a few likely try to limit free usage abuse, but usually it’s allowed because the benefits of going after the few people creating a bunch of free accounts isn’t worth it, not financially or PR.
Yes this exactly. I would rather spend my time building cool new features than take on the burden of building and maintaining some over-engineered system to ensure that the card limit cannot be gamed in any way (which is probably impossible anyways)
Yes! I love this UI style! It’s like Trello if it was designed by Nintendo.
I’m working on a tangential yet similar tool for organizing thought in a graph and want it to feel like this - more like a fun/intuitive game and less like a brutalist tool.
my approach was actually indirectly inspired by the process used to make mario64 – to start with the core interactions (in my case dragging and connecting cards) and make those feel good to use in isolation. Then building the rest of the app around that.
because the colors of connections (and soon, cards) are totally customizable, a traditional dark mode doesn't really work. e.g. you'll set your mode to dark and open someone else's space with colors designed around light mode.
The workaround , (that works pretty well tbh) is to set your space background to black #000. I also just launched the ability to set that to be your default for all new spaces you create (https://twitter.com/KinopioClub/status/1476569968414277634)
Readit News
<offtopic> This reminds me. For quite some time, I've been thinking about how the "infinite canvas" concept could be applied to a browser navigation (replacing tabs, history and bookmarks). Something like "tab overview" in Safari, but instead of just currently opened tabs, it takes you to an infinite canvas of tabs. </offtopic>
Show HN: Kinopio.club – visual thinking, brainstorming tool - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24132631 - Aug 2020 (64 comments)
But besides the infinite thing, I had kind of the same idea last week when I was looking for a mind mapping tool that I could just embed web pages in.
That said, as cool as infinite sounds, you might not even want that irl.
Truely infinite space, like in real life, is harder to find things in, and the content is likely less focused on a single topic, and therefore harder for a human to parse.
(That said, I’m the kind of browser tab user to starts closing things after I get to like 10)
I'll have to play with it, a while, to see if it is something I will actually use.
There are many great tools that I don't use, because I'm weird, but there are a few that I consider indispensable (also, because I'm weird).
If I decide it is one of these, I'll take a sub.
Whether I sub or not, it's definitely a labor of love.
So often I find myself annoyed in Google Sheets that I either have to section off some subset of cells for some sub calculation or move that sub calculation onto another sheet.
I would love to have resizable independent tables/speadsheets inside cells on an infinite canvas like this that I could connect together.
> Kinopio is free for 100 cards, afterwards it's $5/month
How do you keep track of this? Can people just create another account when they reach 100 cards?
Thank you, sorry for off-topic question..
I’m working on a tangential yet similar tool for organizing thought in a graph and want it to feel like this - more like a fun/intuitive game and less like a brutalist tool.
I wrote a little bit about that in https://pketh.org/why-software-is-slow-and-shitty.html
Congrats !, I hope you get tons of customers :D
The workaround , (that works pretty well tbh) is to set your space background to black #000. I also just launched the ability to set that to be your default for all new spaces you create (https://twitter.com/KinopioClub/status/1476569968414277634)