User can highlight an area on the page about togetherjs

[ianb]

Lines, circles, boxes, freehand?

[simonwex]

I'm not convinced of this feature. What's the use case? -- Is it for highlighting an element on the page? If that's the case, how about a highlighter tool that swallows the click event on any element, but then pulses the element until the collaborators ack?

[ianb]

I thought for a first run I'd let you drag a rectangle on the screen, which I think could be useful – I'm not sure if it would be better to have a range or a point in space. I think sometimes you'd want to bring attention to an area, not just a point. Also, if I click on the button I want to point out to you, then there's some highlight around that click, would that obscure the button?

[simonwex]

Updated the issue and assigned it to Beta.

[ianb]

This would be a compelling feature on tablets.

[aarondruck]

Initially I was thinking freehand, to highlight something on the screen. Would prob be better for touch devices. After the user draws, the lines can fade away.

[ianb]

Would it fade away only after it got onto the screen? (In case something is drawn off-screen)

Should it be dismissed in some fashion? We could fade it away after a click. (We can leave pointer-events on until there's a click, then turn them off while it fades away).

[aarondruck]

it would fade after the user draws it on the screen. what would be draw off screen?

[ianb]

The person viewing the drawing may not be scrolled to the same place as the drawer. If we just display and fade away the drawing, the other person may never see it.

[simonwex]

I think given the fact that HTML elements are themselves rendered as rectangles, the highlights should be rectangles. It makes it very easy with both touch devices and mice as you only have to grab top-left -> bottom-right (or reverse).

[simonwex]

@ianb what if we make highlights notifications if it isn't viewable to the other participant? When they click on the notification, it could take them there with a scrollto and runs through the animation.

[ianb]

We could pop up a really mini window showing a kind of highlighting icon (probably the same icon you'd click to activate highlight mode?) and that would scroll, and the highlight would fade once you've seen it. But until the highlight is completely visible on the page (or as visible as possible, potentially it could be bigger than the entire screen) it won't fade away.

[aarondruck]

adding in a note - user can also highlight text on a page

[aarondruck]

(creating a bunch of tickets for future features. these all need discussion, and if it's something we want to put on the roadmap. i have a list of current things that need to be fixed, which these are not. i think we should talk about them, then i can sketch them out.)

this was a noticeable feature that could be useful when another user is joining the same page as you. there is a lag time and instead of constantly clicking where you want to direct the user, you could just highlight some text for the user to look at.

[ianb]

It's also kind of hard for us to match up a click to an exact word, but selection would be easier.

[woniesong92]

Not a high priority. Closing it for now.