Publish: Support Canvas

Publish for Canvas would be amazing!

I can already imagine a website where every page is a 2d infinite canvas with zooming and spacial information organization. This is exactly what I’d like for my website.

I’m more than happy to contribute to the development to make this happen, if that helps. I have taken a look at the JSON format of Canvas files, and could create a rendering view in React if that would be useful to the team.

Basically, this is a feature I’d really like to have… so I’m willing to help out in any way to make this happen. Heck, I’d even donate to a bounty for this feature.

48 Likes

That would be great

Currently, I embed many excallidraw drawings

I’d get rid of my excallidraw subscription and give the money to obsidian :slight_smile:

3 Likes

As an Obsidian Publish user, I am looking forward to this feature. I believe it would be a great addition for my website. I believe that viewers would appreciate it since there is currently no way to filter the Graph View in Obsidian Publish.

1 Like

I would actually like to make canvases the primary mode in which I publish content. I would like my website home-page to be a canvas. I would gradually convert most of my notes into canvases and link them together for the site navigation. This would allow for Obsidian Publish sites to feel like a true labyrinth!

2 Likes

Count me in. As former webdeveloper happy to help out.

Never liked react - i like vue better.

I guess it boils down to:

  • resizable node component with a slot (and color options)
  • various content componens as slot
  • render edges with some smart library
  • handle the pan and zoom with another (or the same?) smart library

Better is to reuse the obsidian render, would be great if this can be open sourced

2 Likes

I would love this. Obviously if you’re building it you can choose React over anything else, but please make it open source :pray:

2 Likes

YES!

So much YES.

I mainly use Obsidian for D&D notes (player, not DM), and I publish my notes for the benefit of the rest of the party. We’re currently involved in a murder mistery, and the first thing I did when I saw the new canvas feature is copying the ~2300 word tracking note for that specific case into a canvas for that perfect Pepe Silvia meme energy.

It. Works. Perfectly.
However, I cannot share this canvas with my party as they don’t use Obsidian, but rely on the published version…

So, for the time being I have to operate on the canvas and mirror it manually to the note for the benefit of my party, which is a smidge frustrating.
Sooo… keep up the good work, canvases are amazing and I’d absolutely love to share this amazing thing with others through the publishing service.

That is all, thank you.

1 Like

Ok. I’m open-sourcing the NextJS web-app I just made to self-publish Obsidian vaults. It supports canvas files.

Github: GitHub - zachdoty/BrainPress: BrainPress is a simple NextJS app to self-publish Obsidian vaults. It supports the new canvas files.
Discord: BrainPress
Demo link: https://canvas-viewer.vercel.app/

If anyone wants to help out with this project please ping me on the discord server! Also, feel free to open github issues or PRs :slight_smile:

3 Likes

This.

Literally a must-have now.
I have been trying multiple third party apps to make mind maps and share them on publish, but it’s still inferior to having a native solution.

1 Like

Count me either

1 Like

Would love this too. Can’t help code, but if you need other resources, found me in!

Would love to see this feature too!

Not much help with coding, but happy to support in any way I can!

This would transform Obisidans usage imho. As a designer I would be able to showcase my work a lot more clearly / in the non-linear format that I think about it.

please please please!

1 Like

I believe our brains organise information in a canvas style and it would be a great service to humanity if we were able to publish canvas ASAP.:blush:

Like others, I also believe it is the natural way to create websites of virtually any complexity.

With ability to

  • search
  • tag
  • link
  • multilayer

within a canvas someone can create wonders

For the time being GitHub - zachdoty/BrainPress: BrainPress is a simple NextJS app to self-publish Obsidian vaults. It supports the new canvas files. is a good start. I hope it gets traction and over time hopefully the Obsidian team will embrace it and either contribute or assimilate. Although this option enables us to self-host, I would be more than happy to pay for the publish Obsidian service, to contribute in a small way to the long-term success of this project.

1 Like

Would also love to see this feature!

What’s the next step to get it going?

1 Like

Yeah this would be great. Any word on this? This was 6 months ago.

Very VERY interested in this as well, basically the reason I started using obsidian less than a week ago, I thought this functionality would already exist. Hoping for an update as well!

2 Likes

Share your canvas

Hey everyone, until canvas sharing becomes natively integrated into Publish, I’ve built a standalone tool for sharing your canvas files: sharecanvas.io.

It allows you to generate a link and share your canvas with anyone — for example: sharecanvas.io/p/needfinding. It’s been really useful for sharing my canvas pages with colleagues.

You can use the tool by going to sharecanvas.io, uploading the original canvas file, and any images referenced in the canvas. By specifying your original Obsidian Publish site, any links in the canvas will redirect to that site. You have full ability to delete all your data if you wish. If you want to edit later, you can use your email address as a key for making changes. Here’s a demo of the process: Sharecanvas.io Demo - YouTube.

The tool is built with React Flow to render the canvas from the open source format, and stores your data securely in Firebase. I’m working on open-sourcing the project and adding more features — e.g. search bar, integrating as a plugin, depending on the timelines for when Publish Canvas is added natively into Obsidian.

Hope you all find this tool useful!

3 Likes

bump! this looks great!!!

1 Like

Hey there,
Thanks for making this feature. I have been scouring the internet for the past month trying to find the combination of functionalities that will allow me to share my work on obsidian with others, and a combination of obsidian publish and your tool seems like the best bet. By any chance, do you have any updates planned or in progress? I am specifically curious about having links in the canvas go to different places on my obsidian website.

1 Like