Online whiteboards
2020-08-26 — 2023-02-27
Wherein online whiteboards are surveyed and the need for stylus input for writing-heavy mathematics is noted; an open-source Excalidraw with end-to-end encryption is listed among candidates, and commercial alternatives with tiered pricing are catalogued.
Online collaborative drawing for doing mathematics online or general diagrams. Many tools claim to do this, but I haven’t had a truly satisfactory experience yet, although I haven’t committed much time to it. I was hoping for an obvious best option. I suspect most will need some kind of stylus input to be any use, at least for the writing-heavy workflows I care about.
Here are some candidates.
1 Excalidraw
An open-source option that promises collaboration and end-to-end encryption is Excalidraw (source).
Virtual whiteboard for sketching hand-drawn-like diagrams. Collaborative and end-to-end encrypted.
This has little specific math support, but lots of virtual whiteboard features — we can draw freehand lines, shapes, text, and so on. Others can simultaneously draw on the same board.
I think it is the only open-source option here (node+typescript). Cool feature: it can be embedded in a React component or in a third-party app.
Because this is free, done well, and doesn’t require arsing around with a credit card, Excalidraw is my go-to option.
There’s also a version with extra work team features called Excalidraw+ (USD7/person/month).
2 Freeform
If my collaborators are in the Apple system, Freeform is pretty good. See Apple launches Freeform: a powerful new app designed for creative collaboration.
3 FigJam
FigJam is made by Figma, who have a very profitable business based on being pretty good at real-time collaboration, so maybe that is worth trying. Point of differentiation with Excalidraw is EVEN MORE STUFF. Virtual sticky notes, virtual stickers, plugins. USD3/editor/month for the FigJam-only plan (USD12/editor/month for the Figma plan which includes FigJam).
4 Mathcha
Mathcha is not quite a whiteboard but more of a prototyping-style app aimed at mathematics online. This is the option that benefits from stylus input least. It’s not a whiteboard in the classic sense, as we don’t draw lines. Equations are entered by markup with a smart UI to make it fast. It’s not particularly real-time collaborative, but more of an old-school share-a-link-to-see-my-work kind of thing. Nonetheless, they have worked so hard on that UI that it feels useful.
The online version is free; the offline desktop app is USD30/year.
5 Miscellaneous options
There are many others.
Interactive scratchpad Collusion (USD20/user/month), Bitpaper (approx USD1/page) is a collective sketch page. Desmos is an online collaborative graphing calculator. Mural (USD20/user/month). Scribble Together seems to have the most powerful free plan of these.
There are other options which are offered only on asinine enterprise pricing (e.g. Blackboard Collaborate) which I will not trouble with here.
6 Point a camera at a physical whiteboard
Not very collaborative but satisfyingly tactile. What is the best possible solution for whiteboards for video transmission?
Candidate: Cristovao Cordeiro and Elisa Valkyria’s $100 Lightboard.
7 Other deliberation tools
Sometimes we want something that is a little more structured than just a diagram editor, incorporating brainstorming or voting tools.
8 Incoming
- OpenBoard, the best interactive whiteboard for schools and universities (Is this actually networked?)