Chalk – Cool HTML Based iPad Drawing App from 37signals
If there’s one thing we love at PadGadget central, it’s when creative people come up with clever ideas, especially if they involve cool gadgets. So when we heard about the latest iPad project from the folks at 37signals, we knew we’d have to check it out.
Chalk, a great drawing app, is the latest application for the iPad to come from 37signals. Instead of your standard native iOS app, they decided to go with an HTML5 based web app dedicated to the iPad. The app was inspired by the chalkboards the 37signals team uses in their own meeting rooms and they tried to duplicate that same experience on the iPad.
Chalk is a cool little drawing tool. It has a very clean and simple user interface which makes it easy to get up and running quickly. To get started, users can pick a red or white piece of chalk from the tray to begin jotting down notes or drawing out their next big idea. If you make a mistake, grab the eraser to remove anything you don’t want to keep. If you want to erase the whole chalkboard simply hit reload in your browser and you can start from scratch. Once you’ve created a drawing you want to keep, you can add it to your iPad’s Photo library by using a standard “tap and hold” gesture.
Since the app is done with HTML5, there’s no need to download anything from the iTune App Store. Simply point your iPad browser to chalk.37signals.com and you’ll be off and running. Once you’ve loaded the page, Chalk will stay in memory and can be used even when your iPad is not connected to web. The functionality and drawing response is impressive for an app that is HTML based and runs completely within Safari on the iPad.
37signals built Chalk as little side project over the course of just a few days and we think they did a nice job. If you like Chalk but need some extra features and want a native iPad app, you can always check out Draft which is 37signals full drawing app for the iPad.
