6 ms·

Excalidraw+

174 points by amasad 5y ago

simonmales 5y ago
Hope this works out for them. Brilliant little tool.
mdoms 5y ago
I love Excalidraw. I wish the team all the very best and I'll for sure be promoting this in my organisation.
conradludgate 5y ago
We use excalidraw within our team at work. It's amazingly easy to produce diagrams to share business logic around. I might recommend this. My biggest pain is that we need to manage and share the drawings ourselves. I normally share a screenshot and I have a collection of .excalidraw files saved locally
- simonmales 5y ago
  Perhaps a collection of links? If you click the link icon in export. But yes, this sounds like what the paid feature will try and solve.
- mpwoz 5y ago
  Draw.io [1] (now diagrams.net I guess?) lets you export a .png file with the diagram embedded in the image. So you don't need to keep the original file, and even an old image from a wiki can be opened up and edited by anybody on the team without having to get the "diagram file" from the original author. Granted, I don't think it does collaboration so that may be a dealbreaker for you 1: https://app.diagrams.net https://app.diagrams.net
linkdd 5y ago
Was looking for a tool like this, thanks!
danr4 5y ago
Don't use it much but I love excalidraw. really has that oldschool freeware vibes. Must say it makes me a bit sad that it is being monetized. Understandable, but still sad. Hope it doesn't lose it's spirit now money is involved. Honestly, excalidraw's advantages is it's simplicity with export and working locally, which makes me think a lot of the enterprisy stuff could be built with external tools or something like that. say an integration with Google Drive/Dropbox.
- wffurr 5y ago
  It’s still free and open source. I’m not sad it’s being monetized, I’m delighted the creators have a revenue stream to keep them working on it.
  - cztomsik 5y ago
    yeah exactly, I would even say it's the only way because otherwise you will eventually need to make money somewhere else and the project will die or at least slow down considerably I have seen that many times already :-/
- iKlsR 5y ago
  It's still free, I've been asking the creator for something like this from day one. I don't like downloading my sessions, I'd rather pay to have something managed with projects etc so this is very much welcome.
ta010101 5y ago
It seems related to eraser recently mentionned https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26963840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26963840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26330288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26330288
hantusk 5y ago
I hope kinks have been worked out. z-index errors, sync not working for some participants and JavaScript alert windows about losing data, were issues the three times I've used it with my team, so i basically dont dare suggest my team using it again. They've been very good at communicating in the GitHub issues I've filed, so hopefully it works for others, but I would advise you to test with a few co-workers before facilitating anything in a group
- dwelle 5y ago
  Hello, Excalidraw+ cofounder here. The z-index syncing should be fixed now in Excalidraw+. The fix should make its way to the base app soon, after we're confident it works correctly. The performance of the collaboration servers is now taking the front seat and should improve in the coming weeks. As for the window alerts — yes, that's a pain point in both apps but we're working on it. It should be better than last time you tried it, let us know what you think. We'd be happy if you file an issue or drop a message on our Discord channels with any other feedback you have!
globular-toast 5y ago
This page has a link to "Try Excalidraw+ for free", but I didn't find a way to try it when I clicked there. I found I could try it at https://excalidraw.com/ https://excalidraw.com/ This looks really good and I'm going to try it out at my work. I haven't found anything so far that comes close to a real whiteboard. If it works out maybe we'll get the + version.
- wffurr 5y ago
  You have to sign up to use the + version. There’s a “sign up” link in the top middle of the page that link takes you to. The whole point of it is the online account and sharing controls, so you have to make an account to try out the + features.
  - globular-toast 5y ago
    Sure, but I'm not going to sign up without trying the product first.
rovek 5y ago
I'm excited about this. I've used Excalidraw as a simple, lo-fi interviewing tool at a few companies for when we want candidates to draw something without having too many tools to get bogged down in making a masterpiece. For me it really hits the sweet spot between being fast and flexible like a whiteboard while still working well for computer input (i.e. doesn't make you free draw with a mouse). It might be worth adding a toggle to the marketing website alongside dark mode to switch the handwriting font to something more readable though
- andreygrehov 5y ago
  Meh... I was once being interviewed and the company offered to use Excalidraw. My experience with the tool was subpar. If you want something truly amazing, check out Whimsical Flowcharts. It's an order of magnitude better than Excalidraw.
  - dominotw 5y ago
    > Meh... > tool was subpar What were there actual issues that you faced? Kind of rude to put it down with vague comments and recommend something else.
    - andreygrehov 5y ago
      Wow. Downvotes. Sure. Here are just a few off the top of my head. 1. Excalidraw doesn't allow you to quickly connect components. 2. It doesn't _always_ allow you to double-click on a component and add a title to it, so you end up using a Text component, which is obviously not what you want because two of the components are not linked. 3. You can't title links/arrows between components. 4. It's cool that they have a components library, but it's barely useful (right now), so I would either make it really good or drop entirely.
- dangerboysteve 5y ago
  nice tool but I'm a fan of draw.io, opensource and can be downloaded to your machine to run locally if wanted.
jiofih 5y ago
Looking forward to Excalidraw switching to an “open core” license in 2023 to get rid of competition! /s Jokes aside, congratulations to the team - it’s one of the best tools for “thinking in a group” ever invented. Thank you to all contributors!
montroser 5y ago
See also Miro[1] and Plectica[2]. We use both extensively for working out technical strategy, mapping system dependencies, etc. [1]: https://miro.com https://miro.com [2]: https://beta.plectica.com https://beta.plectica.com
tyingq 5y ago
Tried it out. Really shows the power of sane defaults and minimal controls. I was able to quickly create a decent drawing without looking at any documentation. One unexpected thing. If I select the pointer icon, and double click on a shape, it lets me add a text label. But the label isn't grouped with the shape by default. I might expect that had I started with the "A" text tool, but I started with the arrow pointer. In that case, I'd expect the label to be automatically grouped with the shape.
- xixixao 5y ago
  I think we have a couple issues opened for this, example: https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw/issues/2764 https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw/issues/2764
jonnydubowsky 5y ago
I'm really enjoying this Excalidraw plug-in for Roam Research by Zsolt Viczian: https://www.zsolt.blog/2021/03/roam-excalidraw-plugin-mvp-release.html?m=1 https://www.zsolt.blog/2021/03/roam-excalidraw-plugin-mvp-re... It let's you jump into diagramming within any block within Roam.
jjuliano 5y ago
I made an app with the purpose of drawing cloud backend architecture diagrams using apple pencil. I haven't used Excalidraw+ but I guess it's the same though. - https://cloudarchitect.app https://cloudarchitect.app
dirkk0 5y ago
I like Excalidraw very much. I even used it to create a game with the Godot game engine: https://curious-games.itch.io/flight13 https://curious-games.itch.io/flight13

Excalidraw+

174 points by amasad 5y ago

simonmales 5y ago

Hope this works out for them. Brilliant little tool.

mdoms 5y ago

I love Excalidraw. I wish the team all the very best and I'll for sure be promoting this in my organisation.

conradludgate 5y ago

We use excalidraw within our team at work. It's amazingly easy to produce diagrams to share business logic around. I might recommend this. My biggest pain is that we need to manage and share the drawings ourselves. I normally share a screenshot and I have a collection of .excalidraw files saved locally

simonmales 5y ago
Perhaps a collection of links? If you click the link icon in export. But yes, this sounds like what the paid feature will try and solve.
mpwoz 5y ago
Draw.io [1] (now diagrams.net I guess?) lets you export a .png file with the diagram embedded in the image. So you don't need to keep the original file, and even an old image from a wiki can be opened up and edited by anybody on the team without having to get the "diagram file" from the original author. Granted, I don't think it does collaboration so that may be a dealbreaker for you 1: https://app.diagrams.net https://app.diagrams.net

linkdd 5y ago

Was looking for a tool like this, thanks!

danr4 5y ago

Don't use it much but I love excalidraw. really has that oldschool freeware vibes. Must say it makes me a bit sad that it is being monetized. Understandable, but still sad. Hope it doesn't lose it's spirit now money is involved. Honestly, excalidraw's advantages is it's simplicity with export and working locally, which makes me think a lot of the enterprisy stuff could be built with external tools or something like that. say an integration with Google Drive/Dropbox.

wffurr 5y ago
It’s still free and open source. I’m not sad it’s being monetized, I’m delighted the creators have a revenue stream to keep them working on it.
- cztomsik 5y ago
  yeah exactly, I would even say it's the only way because otherwise you will eventually need to make money somewhere else and the project will die or at least slow down considerably I have seen that many times already :-/
iKlsR 5y ago
It's still free, I've been asking the creator for something like this from day one. I don't like downloading my sessions, I'd rather pay to have something managed with projects etc so this is very much welcome.

ta010101 5y ago

It seems related to eraser recently mentionned https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26963840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26963840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26330288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26330288

hantusk 5y ago

I hope kinks have been worked out. z-index errors, sync not working for some participants and JavaScript alert windows about losing data, were issues the three times I've used it with my team, so i basically dont dare suggest my team using it again. They've been very good at communicating in the GitHub issues I've filed, so hopefully it works for others, but I would advise you to test with a few co-workers before facilitating anything in a group

dwelle 5y ago
Hello, Excalidraw+ cofounder here. The z-index syncing should be fixed now in Excalidraw+. The fix should make its way to the base app soon, after we're confident it works correctly. The performance of the collaboration servers is now taking the front seat and should improve in the coming weeks. As for the window alerts — yes, that's a pain point in both apps but we're working on it. It should be better than last time you tried it, let us know what you think. We'd be happy if you file an issue or drop a message on our Discord channels with any other feedback you have!

globular-toast 5y ago

This page has a link to "Try Excalidraw+ for free", but I didn't find a way to try it when I clicked there. I found I could try it at https://excalidraw.com/ https://excalidraw.com/ This looks really good and I'm going to try it out at my work. I haven't found anything so far that comes close to a real whiteboard. If it works out maybe we'll get the + version.

wffurr 5y ago
You have to sign up to use the + version. There’s a “sign up” link in the top middle of the page that link takes you to. The whole point of it is the online account and sharing controls, so you have to make an account to try out the + features.
- globular-toast 5y ago
  Sure, but I'm not going to sign up without trying the product first.

rovek 5y ago

I'm excited about this. I've used Excalidraw as a simple, lo-fi interviewing tool at a few companies for when we want candidates to draw something without having too many tools to get bogged down in making a masterpiece. For me it really hits the sweet spot between being fast and flexible like a whiteboard while still working well for computer input (i.e. doesn't make you free draw with a mouse). It might be worth adding a toggle to the marketing website alongside dark mode to switch the handwriting font to something more readable though

andreygrehov 5y ago
Meh... I was once being interviewed and the company offered to use Excalidraw. My experience with the tool was subpar. If you want something truly amazing, check out Whimsical Flowcharts. It's an order of magnitude better than Excalidraw.
- dominotw 5y ago
  > Meh... > tool was subpar What were there actual issues that you faced? Kind of rude to put it down with vague comments and recommend something else.
  - andreygrehov 5y ago
    Wow. Downvotes. Sure. Here are just a few off the top of my head. 1. Excalidraw doesn't allow you to quickly connect components. 2. It doesn't _always_ allow you to double-click on a component and add a title to it, so you end up using a Text component, which is obviously not what you want because two of the components are not linked. 3. You can't title links/arrows between components. 4. It's cool that they have a components library, but it's barely useful (right now), so I would either make it really good or drop entirely.
dangerboysteve 5y ago
nice tool but I'm a fan of draw.io, opensource and can be downloaded to your machine to run locally if wanted.

jiofih 5y ago

Looking forward to Excalidraw switching to an “open core” license in 2023 to get rid of competition! /s Jokes aside, congratulations to the team - it’s one of the best tools for “thinking in a group” ever invented. Thank you to all contributors!

montroser 5y ago

See also Miro[1] and Plectica[2]. We use both extensively for working out technical strategy, mapping system dependencies, etc. [1]: https://miro.com https://miro.com [2]: https://beta.plectica.com https://beta.plectica.com

tyingq 5y ago

Tried it out. Really shows the power of sane defaults and minimal controls. I was able to quickly create a decent drawing without looking at any documentation. One unexpected thing. If I select the pointer icon, and double click on a shape, it lets me add a text label. But the label isn't grouped with the shape by default. I might expect that had I started with the "A" text tool, but I started with the arrow pointer. In that case, I'd expect the label to be automatically grouped with the shape.

xixixao 5y ago
I think we have a couple issues opened for this, example: https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw/issues/2764 https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw/issues/2764

jonnydubowsky 5y ago

I'm really enjoying this Excalidraw plug-in for Roam Research by Zsolt Viczian: https://www.zsolt.blog/2021/03/roam-excalidraw-plugin-mvp-release.html?m=1 https://www.zsolt.blog/2021/03/roam-excalidraw-plugin-mvp-re... It let's you jump into diagramming within any block within Roam.

jjuliano 5y ago

I made an app with the purpose of drawing cloud backend architecture diagrams using apple pencil. I haven't used Excalidraw+ but I guess it's the same though. - https://cloudarchitect.app https://cloudarchitect.app

dirkk0 5y ago

I like Excalidraw very much. I even used it to create a game with the Godot game engine: https://curious-games.itch.io/flight13 https://curious-games.itch.io/flight13