Excalidraw - Virtual whiteboard for sketching hand-drawn like diagrams

[micmc]

@girish That is pretty cool indeed, however far from the powerful and features rich draw.io

[ruihildt]

@micmc Usecase is different, Excalidraw is simpler and friendlier, in both usage and output.

I use both, tbh.

[jdaviescoates]

@girish said in Excalidraw - Virtual whiteboard for sketching hand-drawn like diagrams:

Currently, it's missing some important features like login - https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw/issues/1071 but looks great otherwise.

I guess the new auth thing in 6.0 fixes that issue?

[girish]

@jdaviescoates yes, indeed. I think even things like draw.io will benefit from the same proxy auth.

[yusf]

This is a worthy tool! Clean and quite intuitive. As it's not as overwhelming as draw.io can be it feels even more fitting a Cloudron Unix-like philosophy of Doing One Thing Well.

It has OpenCollective funding as well, ~ $5,546 anually.

Coupled with optional auth it will be a good start for building a remote work app stack fully on Cloudron.

[girish]

I was looking into how this works without having any server component. It seem that is uses Google Firebase/Firestone internally - https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw/pull/2188 . So, it won't exactly be completely selfhosted. Even though it seems everything is e2e encrypted.

[infogulch]

I'd really like to see this too, but it appears that some work still needs to be done to factor out external dependencies / incidental implementation details from the current code.

This is the self-host umbrella issue, which has had some recent activity: https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw/issues/1772

[LoudLemur]

@girish Well done finding this! The demo instance is very responsive and not unpleasant to use.
https://excalidraw.com/

I hope we can support this on Cloudron.

[jdaviescoates]

Details about self-hosting https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw#self-hosting :

We publish a Docker image with the Excalidraw client at excalidraw/excalidraw. You can use it to self-host your own client under your own domain, on Kubernetes, AWS ECS, etc.
docker build -t excalidraw/excalidraw .
docker run --rm -dit --name excalidraw -p 5000:80 excalidraw/excalidraw:latest
The Docker image is free of analytics and other tracking libraries.

At the moment, self-hosting your own instance doesn't support sharing or collaboration features.

We are working towards providing a full-fledged solution for self-hosting your own Excalidraw.

Shame self-hosting doesn't have collaboration features yet, but this still looks well worth having.

[avatar1024]

Would be great to see the self-hosted version gain the collaboration feature soon and then get it on Cloudron! So far it seems one of the best Free Software whiteboard / canvas tool out there in terms of simplicity and feel. So far I'm not finding the Nexctloud whiteboard tool very convenient, intuitive or pretty.

[jdaviescoates]

@avatar1024 said in Excalidraw - Virtual whiteboard for sketching hand-drawn like diagrams:

So far I'm not finding the Nexctloud whiteboard tool very convenient, intuitive or pretty.

Presumably you're trying the new Whiteboard Integration app and not the Whiteboard app?

This one:
https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/integration_whiteboard

Not this one:
https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/whiteboard

[avatar1024]

@jdaviescoates indeed, using the integrated whiteboard. I think the other app been depreciated.

[marcusquinn]

This does look good, and probably evolved since first posted. Worth another look?

• https://excalidraw.com/
• https://libraries.excalidraw.com/
• https://plus.excalidraw.com/excalidraw-plus-vs-excalidraw

[marcusquinn]

We now have tldraw, but just a quick bump on this post for those interested to compare: https://plus.excalidraw.com/excalidraw-plus-vs-excalidraw

[jdaviescoates]

@marcusquinn said in Excalidraw - Virtual whiteboard for sketching hand-drawn like diagrams:

We now have tldraw, but just a quick bump on this post for those interested to compare: https://plus.excalidraw.com/excalidraw-plus-vs-excalidraw

What is not at all clear to me is whether or not Excalidraw Plus is self-hostable or not - have you managed to work that out?

[marcusquinn]

@jdaviescoates I can't see a repo for it. Kinda typical of the FOSS as marketing model, which is fair enough, choices of features to hold back might be questionable though.

[jdaviescoates]

@jdaviescoates said in Excalidraw - Virtual whiteboard for sketching hand-drawn like diagrams:

Shame self-hosting doesn't have collaboration features yet

I note those lines about the self-hosted version not having collaborative features are no longer present on the GitHub repo, and so presumably the the self-hosted version does indeed now have those features!

[Sam_uk]

Anecdotal but I just tried to collaborate on a self-hosted version and it didn't work

[timconsidine]

@marcusquinn said in Excalidraw - Virtual whiteboard for sketching hand-drawn like diagrams:

We now have tldraw,

Given that tldraw wants their ball back, it wold be worth looking at Excalidraw.

The lack of collaboration of features within self-host (unless they have changed that) is a shame but not a blocker to having this on Cloudron (imho).

[robi]

@timconsidine Cryptpad has a collab whiteboard built in btw