Filling the Void of a Physical Whiteboard
blog.tawhidhannan.co.ukShameless plug: I’ve built https://board.new to help with ad-hoc collaborative whiteboarding. One thing I’ve found using more sophisticated tools was that folks spent too much time making it look nice vs discussing the content. Hence this tool that doesn’t distract with that.
That said, mermaid looks pretty nice —- going to try that out for my design documents once settled on an approach.
I love this. It's so easy to use and works great on a trackpad. I'm going to start using it in my meetings.
Nice job!
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EDIT: After playing with it for a bit, I have some feedback :)
- Sometimes, I accidentally press Z instead of shift, or vice versa. I would love to have undo! Backspace or delete hotkey would be perfect.
- For selecting colors, it would be great to just be able to press 1,2,3,4 (rather than cycling through).
- I often forget what color I have selected. Perhaps the cursor could be colored to indicate this?
- When typing text, my first instinct was to use the arrow keys to move the cursor around, but this doesn't work. Also, it's hard to select where the cursor should go to edit.
- The shift and Z hotkeys are great. But I don't quite understand selecting the tools. If I can just hold down Z to erase, why would I ever select the eraser tool? It seems like the most efficient approach is to only ever have the text tool selected, so that at any time I can click to create text, but otherwise I use Z/shift to draw.
> I would love to have undo!
not sure if they added this literally in the last 18 hours, but the usual CMD+Z undo shortcut seems to work for me.
Wow, I just tried it and absolutely love how you put the option to draw by holding shift instead of holding down a mouse/trackpad click. I've hated to draw on the trackpad because it has been so hard to click and draw at the same time.
Where did you get the idea for this? Do you know if a similar function exists in any other drawing application, like Illustrator/Photoshop/GIMP/Inkscape?
Ooo, solved my own problem.
MacOS has an option for "mouse keys" where one can toggle the keyboard to act as the directional control and click control for a mouse. So if I toggle it on, then I can use the "i" key to act as a mouse click and draw on the trackpad, and "m" key to hold a mouse click until I click "." to release it. And then I can toggle the mouse keys on/off by hitting the option key 5 times.
Woohoo!
I'm curious, is something like Shift to draw patentable?
I just tried using this, and it was completely unusable. It was constantly operating in the wrong mode, the z/shift keyboard shortcuts would do the wrong thing most of the time (the only time they seemed to possibly work properly was when in text mode, except that then they’re doing something for text mode as well), colour switching normally didn’t work, when I start drawing lines it first draws one segment from some arbitrary location (probably a point on the last line or some arbitrary earlier-drawn line).
There are clearly some very serious logic and mode bugs present.
I’m using Firefox on Windows, and tried it with mouse, pen and touch.
Two small things:
- It interrupted my drawing-by-holding-LMB twice with the "just use shift" popup. Didn't happen again though.
- The "tip" of the text tool is not where drawing begins when I press shift. This is the result of placing the text cursor tip dead center on the top of the bottom line and then pressing shift to draw upwards: https://i.imgur.com/RKoiyar.png
Firefox 84.0, private mode.
Oooh thanks for sharing. I really appreciate the simple keyboard layout, and that I can jump in without signup and sharing a link is very simple.
Pretty cool! If you are drawing and go off the edge of the screen, when you come back it doesn't let you draw again unless you lift up on the mouse button and press it back down again. Using the shift key was much less reliable than the mouse button.
Nice! Would be better if one could, a) scroll to increase canvas-space and b) zoom out to step back a bit and take a look at the whole drawing.
Shift to draw blows my mind.
I bought a 43" 4K monitor a year ago. I was thinking about buying a whiteboard when I it occurred to me I was sitting in front of a large flat board all day. I took a screenshot, opened up Paint, filled it with a pleasing solid color, made some notes in Paint on it. Drew some boxes and bubbles and a few connecting lines, and made it my desktop background. I keep the screen open in paint so I can easily drag things around and save it again as my desktop background. Every few days I save the current screen in a folder, date it and start a new one, so I have a record of my thoughts. It's so simple that I not only do I actively use it, I enjoy using it and it's been amazingly helpful for organizing my thoughts and staying on track. I'm already looking at it all day. I paste some art on it to beautify it up.
Edit: I found out later conservative historian Niall Ferguson does this with PowerPoint. I tried PP. I like my system better because there's no structure to it. Good for brainstorming.
You can try OneNote or something of that ilk if you like unstructured.
There is nothing like a whiteboard. I use paper and pencil and the Freemind mind mapper to capture and evolve ideas, but I have to have a whiteboard. When I was in the office, I had one behind me, and I used it all of the time. On Saturdays (part of my regular work schedule), I would sometimes go wild with a 15 foot wide whiteboard in one of the conference rooms. After we all began working from home, I ordered a 2ft x 3ft whiteboard for my home office. I'd truly be lost without it.
I'm not even sure how to explain it. Sometimes just putting something on the whiteboard, walking around, contemplating it, is what I need to do. I also use at least four different colors as needed. And today, with smart phones, it's very easy to capture what I've done and share with others.
Sometimes I'm creating a sketch, sometimes code, sometimes just a set of data structures. Once it was a system architecture, highlighting data exchange and functions. It can be one column or more, horizontal or angled, I can add curved arrows. Try to work out a bilinear interpolation scheme for a 3D grid over multiple time sets on a computer. Yeah, it can be done, but developing it on a whiteboard is, well, easier.
I need my whiteboard. I would be lost without it.
My favorite solution that I’ve seen was what my CS professor did: Zoom allows you to share the screen of an iPad, so my professor just pulled up notes and drew as he would on a normal whiteboard. It wasn’t collaborative, but we didn’t need that.
Yes!
I have an iPad as well, and love going down this route if I'm presenting. However, my desire for perfect lines gets stronger and I'm not always the best at drawing...
I was fully remote before COVID, and the best solution I have come up with so far is iPad + Apple Pencil + Google Jamboard. I can open it on my PC and screen share from there into meetings or with others than don’t use Jamboard.
I tried a bunch of different options when my team went remote, including
* Google Drawings (yuck)
* LucidChart (yuck)
* Miro (good for diagrams, not for drawing)
* Jamboard (good for drawing, not for diagrams)
And a few inputs including:
* Wacom pencil (ok)
* Inklet pen (garbage)
* iPad Pro (great)
So far Jamboard / iPad pro is the closest to a true whiteboard experience that I've found, but it's pretty restrictive that it's tightly coupled to the physicality of the actual Jamboard, and you can't pan/scroll the whiteboard space like a lot of the pure digital options.
It would be nice to have a single tool that worked both for sketching/drawing (a la whiteboarding), but also could upgrade well to actual diagrams / boxes if you want to promote a collaborative sketch to something more permanent (say you're drafting a design doc and you want to use the sketch as your diagram-of-record).
On my list to test is the ReMarkable's shared drawing mode, haven't got round to trying that yet.
What has worked really well for me running workshops and other things remotely is Mural[1] with an iPad Pro. I can open my screen and share it on my laptop / desktop. And open the same view on my iPad, then draw. This allows people that don't have an app to see what is going on, and people that do have the app, can interact with the same virtual board
This looks like my list with a few minor changes. The ipad pro + a board solution just isn't functional enough to justify rolling out to a team for me, at least if you don't have other functions for that tablet. Same with the fancy graphic tablets.
+1. I actually used this when interviewing remotely and it worked great.
Been doping this for over 20 years: purchase the raw material used for cheap shower walls. It is the same material used to make whiteboards. 20 years ago a "shower wall panel" was the size of an entire wall, 4 x 8 feet, for about $11. I just checked Home Depot, they are only $27 now. I just drill/screw them right to the wall. Best thing ever. I have several rooms with doodle walls.
A couple of startups I've worked at over the years did this. Couple of observations:
The coating doesn't seem to be quite as thick. Perhaps a few coats of whiteboard conditioner before starting and at intervals would help.
If you don't put a faux border on it, then you get whiteboard ink dust on the walls and it looks kind of trashy. I speculate that your best bet would be to get a bunch of trim with a rabbet in the back, bolt the bottom piece to the wall, have someone hold the board in place while you bolt the top part on to keep it from shifting. Hide a couple of screws through the boards along the sides to make sure it doesn't buckle on you.
I have 4 of these, for about 9 yrs now. Doesn't look trashy, nor do I have ink dust on the wall. Didn't bolt either. Used the velcro glue thingy.
Do you have a link? Tried searching but found many options, but none that fits your description. Thanks!
Well, I found it instantly this morning to quote the price, and just now blew my entire lunchtime trying t find it again.
Anytime I've bought them in the past, I just walked into a Home Depot and asked for "shower board, marker board, the cheap laminated particle wood". There are typically a few types, more like a board, so I ask for the flimsy ones used for cheap showers, and they take me to a stack of them in the lumber area. They are very thin, like an eighth of an inch. You'll need a vehicle larger than a sedan, BTW, this are BIG. But you can also have them cut for you, often no charge.
Something like this I believe
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Broan-Universal-Backsplash-Plate-Wh...
Lowes calls it "smooth white wall panel"
I put one of these [1] in my office 2 years ago and am very pleased. It wasn't cheap, but I use it daily. It always wipes clean, and there is no ghosting. It's right behind my back when I'm at my desk, so I can also turn my webcam on it when in meetings.
I've tried to use electronic whiteboard alternatives and it's just not as fluid when trying to get ideas out. Maybe an iPad Pro with a Pencil, but I haven't sprung for one of those yet...
[1] https://www.pegasusav.us/pegasus-magnetic-glass-marker-board...
Miro.com what everyone is gravitating towards. It is amazing. Sooo good.
Yes, at my previous gig Miro replaced all collaborative, whiteboarding, brainstorming, mind mapping and presentation software except for MS Teams. Even powerpoint was replaced.
Edit: Forgot architecture drawing software.
I feel like the OP's idea is not a bad approach for a tiny slice of what we do on a whiteboard.
All the tech solutions I've tried fall far short of a real board (or collaborating on paper). Drawing with a mouse is terrible, but buying my team tablets etc. for this had its own set of challenged. Software at least lets remote workers see the same "document" but it's a pretty mixed bag too. I've tried most of them and haven't found something that really shines (including the dedicated ones like miro).
Half the time we end up drawing on paper and sharing images of that, which is also not ideal.
Anyone come up with a really workable replacement?
Love the code rabbit hole, but alternatively you can just use an online whiteboard that doesn't try to be too clever, such as https://awwapp.com/
In this space, I was really underwhelmed by Microsoft. I'm a fan of MS Teams, and feel like it works really well. Better than Zoom for the use case of a space for my smallish team, because of the tie-in with OneDrive, Powerpoint, etc.
But, the whiteboard app is just so terrible. It feels like someone did an MVP and never gathered any feedback to improve it. It's essentially useless in it's current state.
Yes, the whiteboard app is terrible. If you are in that ecosystem though, you can draw directly in OneNote more effectively, and you can also embed diagrams there from any other place you are drawing - works ok.
I'll give that a go, thank you. It's just disappointing that MS couldn't even match Zoom's "annotate" functionality. Which is limited, but actually works.
What kills me about the Teams whiteboard app is that Microsoft already makes the excellent Surface whiteboards!
We're 10 months into a pandemic and Teams still doesn't have a decent whiteboard feature.
Microsoft should be ashamed.
Isn’t this a matter of making sure participants have a good input device like an iPad, more than having the fight software? There are already collaborative whiteboarding solutions but using them with mouse and keyboard doesn’t work.
Any good tutorials or toy projects to help in learning plantUML.
I'm in software engineering from a science background and I really feel the lack of being able to think about my code and systems in something as structured as the OP banged out.
You may be interested in mermaid
For those who are now WHF and absolutely cannot be without a physical whiteboard, white boardpaint (a.k.a., dry drase paint) is a super flexible solution. You can basically make any size whiteboard(s) to fit your limited space.
Or you can just buy a whiteboard that fits your space.
I've tried the paint several times (including setting up commercial spaces) and it's always a bit disappointing and becomes difficult at best to keep clean.
I think the only solution that really works will be EInk boards the same size as real whiteboards. I have tried a ton of software solutions but in the end they all have a working area that’s too small and are clunky to use.
Good luck to anyone who wants to try to replace the whiteboard with any kind of screen technology.
For me, nothing is even remotely close to be able to replace whiteboard, brown paper and marker pens. I'm not saying that the void doesn't exist, it's just that the void currently is too big and all solutions are nowhere near filling the void.
With a whiteboard my experience is that everyone can pick up a pen and start contributing immediately.
Some times, to be able to discuss your problem space you need to remove all distractions.
I have had countless amazing meetings where we leave technology at the desk and sit down in a meeting room with a huge whiteboard and map everything out.
Heck, I even asked for a whiteboard to be installed in my office just to draw things out whenever I need to explain something.
It is even good for personal stuff. It's there until I wipe it away and always instantly accessible.
>For me, nothing is even remotely close to be able to replace whiteboard, brown paper and marker pens.
Reminds me of an interview of David Fattal, where the journalist asked him about how he got the idea of the holographic 3D screen: "My [...] colleagues go directly to tablets to work on mathematical computing software like Matlab or Simulink, where computations are guided. Due to that, they sometimes lack intuition. With my pen and paper, I work anywhere." (La Recherche, 2015/03, translated) Here I understand "anywhere" as both physically, and in the conceptual/mental space.
>Some times, to be able to discuss your problem space you need to remove all distractions.
And also all constraints/guidances.
We have an high tech whiteboard in the office I work.
And it is fine, it is always on, you can draw as soon as you pick the stylo, the UI is minimal to non existent, you just you can drag the screen left or right to get more screen estate and when you are done you can email the result to your inbox. I actually like it.
It is not significantly better than a whiteboard, but also not worse. It is probably 100x more expensive though.
Edit: it might be cheaper than having someone that make sure that working markers are always available which is a common failure mode of phisical whiteboard. How long this will last we will have to see.
Electronic whiteboard will crush regular old whiteboard if executed correctly.
plantUML meets doxygen would be interesting.
I was involved in a very large system a decade ago that used robodoc. Robodoc has less features than doxygen but worked across more languages.
Swagger.io is a nice system although limited exclusively to REST APIs.
Anyway the examples above rendered extremely quickly even in 2010 and you could scaffold out entire ideas more or less in real time to get a whiteboard-ish experience assuming everyone on a conference call had a web browser window open.
I use an iPad with an Apple Pencil. This so far has been the closest to a whiteboard.
It's called a sketchpad. You can scan your works if you must share them. So much easier because you've got better control over your hand than with it high up for the white board. Unless you're an artist used to working with easels, I guess.