> Browser Not Supported
>
> PCB Tracer requires a browser that supports access to a local directory.
> This is needed to save and load your PCB Tracer project files.
>
> Please use Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge for the best experience.
> Directory picker is not supported in this browser. Please use a modern browser like Chrome or Edge.
If you're developing a web app with APIs only available in certain browsers, just say/admit so.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System...
Why do you need file access to sell me?
Closed immediately.
btw. I am your target market.
For download, it can download from a blob URI. This is not an uncommon practice.
If (not verified since I'm using Firefox) it claims that "Gerber files are composed of many individual files so that those two don't suffice" and the app does involve Gerber processing, it could have been solved by introducing a zip library.
A zip library is precisely how other webapps that load or output Gerbers handle it.
I didn’t realize spite for users was a good reason for me to not bother with Firefox support in my web apps, thank you for enlightening me
And you thought it good to post this?
Bugs me so much that my mid-sized US city posts official documentation (only) as google drive hyperlinks. I should not have to allow google products onto my networks just to get my recycling schedule, court documents, &c.
So instead, I go into city hall and ask them to print it out for me (they know who I am at this point).
----
My bank is literally right across the street from me; when their 2-factor garbage started preventing me from checking balances, online, I just started walking into their lobby every time I need my balance.
The File System Access API has security precautions built-in. For example, it requires users to explicitly grant permission to access a specific directory (once) per session. Also, the API never allows access to root or to system-related directories.
EEs better start looking at burger king jobs tbh. Funny how AI is notorious at attacking STEM jobs but I see lawyers and doctors are still a protected class due to lobbying and making laws that prevent AI to be used in these fields.
Darn. Disappointing. Guess I will have to keep looking.
Also... it doesn't look open-source and the comments about file access are valid. The functionality listed is completely possible as a browser-based local app with no server functionality.
Other webapps (https://falstad.com/circuit/) seem to be able to open a file picker in Firefox just fine. Saving is just via downloading to the Downloads folder, but the functionality is not impossible.
Would be really neat if it could trace automagically too, possibly with sanded PCBs?
I came to say that this looks amazing and came at the most absurdly perfect time, because I was literally habitually skimming HN before settling in to manually reverse engineer a PCB.
I hope this works well, because it's an extraordinarily useful tool if so.
The funny thing is that for all of the people complaining about granting filesystem access, it actually won't allow you to select sensitive paths; no system folders, no drive roots.
I do have some feedback, and I've found some bugs. I gave up on your photo manipulation tools and just did manual keystone perspective tweaks in my photo editor. I would happily use your app to do it if it worked, but the keystone thing was super broken for me; the sanest way to make this work would be to have the user drop 4 points on each side and just do it; all of the fussy nudge/scale stuff is really just a half step towards point-based keystones.
Early on I had some pretty serious bugs that emerged when I was jumping between magnification levels. At one point all of my objects were unceremoniously moved off where I'd placed them to whitespace outside of the photo. That sucked. Now I save frequently and only change magnification when I'm in select mode.
I also find that the "fit canvas to window area" is a bit broken when moving between full and partial sized browser windows in Brave on Windows.
However, the biggest bug or behaviour I can't quite figure out is that when I switch to the back view it doesn't seem to reverse the position of the dots and objects placed. I am probably doing it wrong, but still: my strongest feedback currently is that switching sides is awkward at best and slightly broken at worst.
All of that said... I love it! I am thrilled with it. You've made something totally amazing in a short time.
The big feature for me was being able to have multiple photos of the PCB side by side with perspective corrections so locations were correlated across the board.