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Comment by rampatra | Hacker News Reader

This is my first macOS app that I launched yesterday. Really excited to share it with you all. The app is called Presentify and it lets you better explain yourself during presentations or while working from home via video calls, etc. Given that most of us are now working from home, I thought this might be helpful to some.

Here are the links:

* Website: https://presentify.compzets.com

* Demo: https://youtu.be/CTR1iAbGhjg

* Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/presentify/id1507246666

Please, feel free to share your feedback. It would mean a lot to me.

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Cool idea! Since you're asking for feedback, here's my question:

Is it drawing inside of the window, or is it at a fixed point on the screen? As in, if I underline text and then scroll down, does the underline scroll down with the text? What if I dragged the window to the left or right? I only watched the YouTube video and there was no scrolling (or dragging) while a drawing was visible in the demo, so guessing no?

Not OP, but I bought the $3 app. When annotating is active, you're drawing on the screen and other content is not interactive. When you deactivate annotation, the annotations vanish and other content is now interactive.

I'm guessing the app creates a transparent NSWindow the size of the screen, and you are drawing to that. That's why scrolling doesn't work.

In order for scrolling to work you'd have to do something like create a transparent window over the app you are drawing on, and scroll the application window that is below using the Accessibility API.

That's correct. I could have used Accessibility API to allow scrolling but apple would not allow me to publish my app on the app store as the app wouldn't be sandboxed.

Great idea!

One suggestion: don’t use Twitter as your support/contact system. I don’t have an account with them, don’t want an account with them, and so it’s a turnoff to think I might not have a good way of providing feedback or get support if I paid for this product.

Thanks for your feedback. Yes, I will change it in a couple of minutes as someone else also complained about it. However, the support link is at the bottom that takes you to a google form. You do not need a twitter account to get support for the product. I hope this helps.

The change is now deployed!

I agree with Zelphyr's statement and would add that Facebook should also be avoided for support for exactly the same reasons.

I find facebook the most friendly way to ask for support or interact with companies. Please keep it :)

Genuine question,

‘Friendly’ how? I’m wondering how it’s better than a ticketing system or email.

Who is using emails nowadays? Chatting via messenger is much more informal. Also most of my communications are via messenger, so it is nice to have one place for all.

i hate those chat bubbles that pop up. Unless its something that I need fixed asap I always email.

I would think the issue is not “avoid using X”, but “don’t _only_ use Twitter and/or Facebook”

As long as there’s responsive support via standard ‘open’ channels such as email or phone, why would you care whether others can use other channels (e.g. regular mail, fax, or home visits :-) ) to get support?

I like it, nice and simple. I tried it with Astropad so I can markup from an iPad and that works pretty well.

couple of things:

when screen annotation off, two finger scrolling gestures don't work (though scrolling with arrow keys for example still does). Not sure if that was intentional

It would be nicer if the erase tool was a real eraser, and not just a way to clear the full screen (since turning off annotations already does that anyway

I will add the eraser later but I am going to add undo/redo feature in the next release so that may be helpful to you in the meanwhile.

And, thanks for the compliment.

Also because you asked for feedback, and I'd like to understand how.

- When I draw, I can't scroll anymore.

- When I draw, I can't quit. The button to open the menu doesn't work and I see no button to exit.

I ended up with CMD + Q to close the application. I now see there's shortcuts in the menu, but I wouldn't rely on shortcuts for operations. In my opinion, shortcuts are shortcuts for buttons, not a substitute.

> When I draw, I can't scroll anymore.

This solves one major technical problem: how to make the annotations move with content

> The button to open the menu doesn't work and I see no button to exit.

Do you mean the button on the menu bar doesn't work? Definitely sounds like a bug; works well for me on the macOS 10.15.4. Also, the keyboard shortcuts work for me to toggle annotation.

> ... shortcuts are shortcuts for buttons, not a substitute.

Disagree. Shortcuts are for functions of the app, like menu items. There are many menu items in many apps that don't have buttons, but they have shortcuts. I would agree that there shouldn't be shortcuts for 'hidden' functionality.

Hello, sorry for the late reply. Yes, when you draw you cannot operate on other applications. Apple restricts it. There is a workaround for this but if I go with that then the app won't be sandboxed(meaning it can't be published to the app store anymore).

The button on the menu bar should work as only the visible screen is where the annotation takes place. If in case it doesn't work for some reason, you can always use the keyboard shortcut control+option+A to toggle annotate feature.

Hope this helps!

Nice work! I bought it and tried it with Sidecar and an iPad Pro. It works pretty well. Some feedback:

1. Make the color/clear buttons a little larger. The hit targets are very small at the moment when using a Pencil on iPad. It's easy to draw on the buttons by mistake when you mean to press them.

2. Add a “stop annotating screen” button to the buttons, separated by some space so it's harder to press accidentally. That way I can end the annotation session from the iPad instead of having to use the keyboard or mouse.

3. Add a “undo stroke” command and shortcut. Users of AstroPad should then be able to map this to a two-finger tap, which would give a really nice undo workflow for drawing on screen. https://astropad.com/magic-gestures/. When annotating it's pretty common to want to undo a bad mark without having to clear everything you've drawn so far.

Thanks for the feedback.

I will be implementing the 2nd and 3rd in the next release. 1st one I can do after. I can increase the size of the pen color selectors.

Since you're asking for feedback: how about a non-App Store version?

Yes, it is doable. Not sure if Apple has some policies restricting that. If not, then it is definitely doable.

May I ask why would one need a non-app store version? I thought users would trust the App Store more than other websites like gumroad, paddle, etc.

I’m sure everyone has their own reasons, but my personal idiosyncratic one I don’t like buying apps that require online activation—I feel as though they aren’t really mine. App Store apps moved to a new computer won’t run until you connect to Apple’s servers, and consequently, you would be unable to reinstall them in a theoretical future where Apple’s servers have gone offline.

Mind you, Paddle has this problem too, but some other systems, like FastSpring, do not.

Although as an additional addendum to that—and this is probably not going to make you want to use Paddle—there is a generic keygen that works for all Paddle apps, so I don’t mind buying them because I know I have a failsafe.

I don't think it's something that I'll need often, but I've bought it anyways, might come useful sometimes. Works good, doesn't take much memory, I like it very much and the price is very fair.

Out of curiosity what is Compzets.com that's linked from the app, is it the author's company or it's just an ad?

Thank you for your support. Means a lot to me. Compzets.com is the website that I developed when I was back in college. Since then I have been launching all apps, plugins, extensions, etc. under this brand. So, to recapitulate, it is not an ad :)

I’ll share it with my friends and advisors who are doing a lot of remote teaching at the moment. Unfortunately, I don’t think many of them would pay for software :/ It looks like a great app though, I might check it out!

I have 3 promo codes that I can share here. You can use one on the Mac App Store and install the app for free. I hope that it helps. All the best!

Promo codes:

9AJ6FWEEAAJK L9K9XKKKEPRA KXMYAJNA7HYA

Codes are all used, but thank you for providing them (and developing the app)!

This is what people are conditioned to nowadays, 3 dollars is too much for something that is actually beneficial.

That’s really depressing: Doing remote teaching but being to cheap to buy the person providing a tool a beer.

This looks really nice, congratulations!

Slack has something similar during video calls where anyone can draw on the screen and the annotation automatically fades after a few seconds. Might be a good addition to your product.

This app also has the feature to automatically erase your drawings on the screen. Check Preferences. However, it doesn't have the fade animation. Will add it soon.

And, thanks a lot for the compliment :)

Neat. In the demo are you using a stylus? Or are you using the trackpad or mouse?

In the demo, I used the trackpad on my Macbook Pro. However, if you want to write, I think you may need a stylus.

Btw, Macbook's touchpad can be used with a stylus intended for a phone. (And probably other modern touchpads can too.) Specifically, you can conceivably write or draw if you enable double-tap-and-drag for dragging.

Apple's Preview app allows drawing with the touchpad without double-tapping, to sign on a PDF. Presumably someone could make an app that would switch to such a mode system-wide on a hotkey, and dialed down the sensitivity.

Is it available on Homebrew? A lot of us avoid the App Store...

I am not sure how the payment thing would work on homebrew. I will have to look at this.

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