We're excited to share that Web Forms now fully supports the signature, annotate, and draw question types!
All three of these features open a dedicated drawing pad where users can easily sketch using their mouse, finger, or stylus, and save the final result directly as an image.
Signature
When you need a formal sign-off, the signature question type provides a focused experience. It opens a blank pad sized for a handwritten signature, defaulting to a fixed black pen and providing only a "clear" button to keep the interface simple.
Annotate
For annotation, respondents can capture a new photo with their camera, upload a file from their device, or start with a default image attached to your form, and then draw directly on top of it.
Draw
Open a completely blank drawing pad for freehand sketching and diagrams. Like annotation, this question type lets respondents change pen color, zoom, undo, and clear.
This is much improved on Enketo! The zoom makes for more precise markups, and if resolution is preserved (as camera app res / selected image res / max-pixels value) that's even better. Multi step undo is also great.
Is the submitted file a JPG or PNG? (Collect is JPG, Enketo is PNG)
Switching between move and annotate takes a little getting used to, but is no different from zoom-pan and sketch in a whatsapp mobile annotation for example.
There's no visible 'save' - everything is cached I take it, Collect saves (and then loses undo ability) on exit annotation back to form.
I can't 'clear' the captured/uploaded image, only the annotation over it. Not sure how critical this is, but the use case of - I want to remove the image I captured/uploaded can only be achieved by replacing it with a different image, not no image at all. EDIT: I discovered this entirely by accident: Selecting choose image again, then cancelling out gave me a delete dialogue. Solves the issue, but it's not obvious how you would do it and not in the (i) dialogue.
if resolution is preserved (as camera app res / selected image res / max-pixels value) that's even better
Yes, we worked to ensure the final image resolution stays as close to the original as possible, while still preventing bloated file sizes. The max-pixel feature is supported and serves as a great way to reduce file size; however, the image resolution will drop if the max-pixels value is set too low.
Is the submitted file a JPG or PNG? (Collect is JPG, Enketo is PNG)
Web Forms is saving the file in JPG format.
There's no visible 'save' - everything is cached I take it, Collect saves (and then loses undo ability) on exit annotation back to form.
Correct. Web Forms autosave and the 'undo' action will continue to function. However, once a form has been submitted and is subsequently edited, existing annotations can no longer be reverted. The 'undo' action is only available for newly added annotations.
Selecting choose image again, then cancelling out gave me a delete dialogue. Solves the issue, but it's not obvious how you would do it and not in the (i) dialogue.
Thank you for flagging this! We recently noticed similar behavior with our file upload questions too and have filed a ticket to improve the dialog.
Web forms handle "clear answer" differently across question types (e.g., ranking or single-select questions, which don't have a button for it). To help us design the best solution, could you share a bit more about the specific scenarios in which fully clearing an annotation question is most important to your workflow?
The “Start drawing here” alert on the draw question type feels unnecessary and potentially distracting. I think the question text will usually provide enough context, and even without it, the interaction feels fairly intuitive.
This is not one I have a clear need for, but my opinion about clearing a question response is that if the question is optional and was accidentally answered or answered and then deciding it was not required, then it should be possible to return that question to the unanswered state instead of having to submit something that is incorrect / unnecessary or restart the form.
In WF this is easy for some (eg multi selects, text/number entry, date&time, file, image (no annotate)) but harder (image annotate) or not possible for others (eg single select, rank, range, geopoint (no appearance), likert).
