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Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

icepanel.io

31–40 of 83 posts

Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

#32
post #31

What on earth do diagrams have to do with trust in docs? Docs that are useful, accurate, and up to date would increase trust.

We agree - useful, accurate, and up to date docs are what increases trust! We're bringing docs closer to the diagrams to visually explain your system in smaller chunks. We've found docs often accompany diagrams, and they become out of date as soon as they're exported! We think instead of diagrams being in docs, docs should be in the diagram.

Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

#33

I've always felt that these type of tools shouldn't have a traditional home page with sign up, sign in, etc. If you go to Excalidraw's website, it immediately launches the application for you to start using it. If you need extra features, only then you go to a page that provides details, pricing, etc. This is a beautiful pattern that makes these type of tools a daily habit for people to use. I don't want to create an…

I get that, but they want to collect your email to improve marketing. If the product is strong enough it may not matter. Practically speaking, I think getting user signup info is pretty important.

Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

#35
I have been using whimsical for diagrams and prototyping prototypes. Some of my colleagues are converted after they have seen it. The ease of use is the best I have seen so far. It is bold and easy to read.

Seeing the demo page, I have to ask: why do we stay with the traditional black, grey and white colors for diagrams?

Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

#36
post #26
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish there would be a mixture of diagrams.net and mermaid.

What would that ideal mixture look like to you?

drawio using the templating engine of mermaid. So it would have a "restricted mode" that matches roughly to what mermaid would output.

Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

#39
post #13
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For diagrams that are long-lived and refactorable, diagrams-as-code is really your only option. Changing complex diagrams with drag-and-drop interfaces is a nightmare.

I wish there would be a mixture of diagrams.net and mermaid.

draw.io/diagrams.net has a mermaid plugin

https://github.com/nopeslide/drawio_mermaid_plugin

Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

#40

Having fallen back in love with PlantUML recently I’ll never use a proprietary tool that doesn’t have declarative syntax. System diagrams and documentation are a crucial part of any software business and one that is regularly out of date as people end up using tools like draw.io which nobody knows how to get access to or use.

> I’ll never use a proprietary tool that doesn’t have declarative syntax

Can you provide an example of what you're referring to?

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