Furry stuff, oekaki stuff, and other stuff.
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Yeah, had a look (probably not a very extensive look, but I found a few things) and nothing out there is as good as paintBBS or Chibi paint. The ones I tried were slow and awkward to use in comparison.
I think I must have installed the wrong java version...or gotten confused. Hmm. It's possible. I won't strain my brain! I'm not good at that stuff. x____x
I'm just going ahead and sorting an oekaki out anyway. It worked fine once I'd figured out the java stuff out. I just hope that they come up with a solution to the "security" stuff rather than the silly work-around that makes it hard to just lark around with stuff like we used to and have fun...it feels a little stifling.
I was under the impression that Java works just fine with 64-bit browsers, as long as you install the 64-bit version of Java. Note that the 32-bit and 64-bit versions must be installed separately and at the same time for 64-bit support to function. The 32-bit version of Java is the default install. You have to go to the offline download section of the Java web site to find the 64-bit version.
This whole mess about Java being a security threat started shortly after the Flash security theater began. Oracle took their sweet time fixing a few problems with Java a few years back, and then Mozilla decided to disable certain versions of Java until the problems were known to be fixed. This effectively put Mozilla in charge of Java's security and update policies, and Oracle had to do something to get the community's trust back. This resulted in talks about tightening Java's default security permissions and displaying warnings when unsigned applets were run (on my machine, Firefox crashed every time I tried to bypass the warnings). Eventually, Oracle announced that all unsigned applets would be disabled, which is pretty stupid and will achieve nothing (signing an applet does not guarantee it is safe -- only limiting local storage access is safe).
Personally, I'm pretty upset about this decision. First, I think the security issues with Java are way overblown. If anything, Java's security policies have been too strict, resulting in many features being disabled over the years, namely the ability to play sound and the option to connect to servers other than the host domain. I remember when all the oekaki applets failed to work with Firefox for about a year due to tightening of policies with no easy way to override them.
I think user choice is paramount, and I don't like the idea of browser developers being in a position to bully 3rd-party developers. Unfortunately, there's little we can do to change the upcoming policies. Very few people are thinking forward far enough to stick up for Adobe, Oracle, and all other plugin developers.
As for the HTML5 painting apps, there are generally two groups of them: the ones that suck, and the ones that are proprietary. I've yet to find a halfway decent paint app that is actually free to use. Most of the ones that are passable are way, way too slow or suffer from major technical issues, such as drawing bugs. There's lots of good ones out there, but they are all commercial and not free for us to use in an oekaki CMS. There don't seem to be any simple apps, either. Most people who work on a paint app make them far too sophisticated and try to clone Photoshop. There's nothing out there designed specifically for pixel art, which as far as I'm concerned, is the heart and soul of oekaki.
It's been a nightmare contacting people to help write an HTML5 paint app. There was this one guy that was working on a really damn good clone of PaintBBS, and it was about 50% done, but then the guy just disappeared and seems to have abandoned the project. I only have a partial, minimized copy of the source, which is not good enough for me to continue development (I'm not a JavaScript programmer, either).
Unless I can recruit a real programmer or two to assemble a simple app, I doubt there's much that's going to happen in the world of oekaki. I'm not interested in working on Wacintaki 2.0 unless at least one good HTML5 app shows up. I guess I could start some kind of coding bounty or put together a donation-driven milestone fund. It looks like no code will be written otherwise.
Hey Wac,
Recently I've been tinkering about with your wonderful oekaki program. I hit a bit of a brick wall last night when it actually came to using it, because of the problems with using Java in browsers. After a couple of hours trying to figure out why I couldn't get the applets to work, the solution was that the (Windows version) 32 bit bit version of Java only works for browsers - not 64 bit, and that you have to allow java to run for specific site. So I got it working...almost. Then I chickened out.
As you know Java is considered a security risk etc...Java is also saying on their site that future versions will only allow java applets to run from trusted or authorized sources. So I don't think that'll be good. x_____x
Then again, I've just been reading there are security exploits in flash too (hardly news), so that's not really the issue...
This looks to be one of the main reasons that the tradition of oekaki art has been on the decline. It's a shame, because I did have one running a few years ago, and it was fun until the problems with Java started. Now browsers are making it harder for the end user rather than helping fix it. Trying to figure out whether I need to ditch my current browser actually...
So I looked for "flash painting program" in google and a few flash painting things showed up...QueekyPaint for example...and another called sumo paint - which is def not free. Hmmmmm. But I have not idea whether there will be something that would work in a similar way to the java applets like Chibi Paint (I'm not a programmer). I thought it was worth mentioning it at least in case it helps, but I'm not hopeful.
I might just press on anyway since I spent a while getting one installed the other day...and made a few themes for it. I'll share them later.