[DONE] Whiteboard Grid Improvements

Ideas & Features
1

Let me start with saying that I love all the love that the whiteboard has received over the last weeks and months! It’s gotten better by leaps and bounds! :slightly_smiling_face:

That said, there are a few (hopefully smaller) refinements, that would IMHO make the grids and guides even more useful and upgloevel the board for my diagramming uses:

  1. Make the grid points smaller. If you want to keep the dots, they should IMHO be 2x2 px, so it is 100% clear where the alignment is (in the middle). Or, my preferred solution (as a long-time OmniGraffle fan) would be to have grid lines instead. The current dots are too big and fuzzy to feel precise.
  2. All shapes and entities added should default to a size that aligns with the grid. Right now, entities have a width that’s making them not match the grid, so I have to choose if I want to align left or right. By adjusting the default sizes, these boxes would at least always fit the grid horizontally. Yes, vertically, the dynamic size may make grid alignment harder, but maybe even that could be made happen. :slightly_smiling_face:
  3. Snapping to the grid should force an object edge to be on a grid. So with Snap to grid enabled, I should not be able to place objects in a way that none of the edges are on a grid (line). If an object is not matching the grid sizing, at least 2 of the edges should always be on a grid.
  4. Resizing and placing an object should also force me onto the grid, if Snap to grid is enabled. Right now I can still place and resize ignoring the grid.
  5. The grid and guides should also apply when using arrow keys to move objects. If Snap to grid is enabled, pressing my arrow key should move an object by exactly one grid step.

And here some recordings that show the challenges:

The object doesn’t match the grid size (#2) and also, I can drag the object between the grid lines (#3).
2024-07-05 at 12.39

Adding objects doesn’t match the grid and resizing doesn’t force me onto the grid (#4)
2024-07-05 at 12.43

The guides and grids apply to the mouse but not the keyboard (#5)
2024-07-05 at 12.07

In comparison, here is how OmniGraffle behaves:
2024-07-05 at 12.46

And, to be fair, OmniGraffle has been around for 20 years and is a specialised diagramming tool, so it’s not a fair comparison.
The reason I share these is because I think that OmniGraffle has the best grid/guide system that I have seen across all tools and if Fibery can emulate that, it would make the Whiteboard even better.
And, as I mentioned, I would hope that these are relatively simple adjustments for the library that you use?

Many thanks!

3 Likes
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Thank you for the detailed feedback about the grid behavior. I’ll connect it to our Whiteboard product area. By the way, we don’t use any libraries; our whiteboard is a completely custom solution.

3 Likes
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Thanks, @alex!

Excited to hear that it’s a custom solution as that’ll mean you have way more control even if that comes at the cost of speed to development. :slightly_smiling_face:

With that in mind I’ll definitely share more feedback as things progress! :heart_hands:

1 Like
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+1 positioning items on the whiteboard right now feels finnicky at best and buggy at worst.
A lot of the times it feels like I’m fighting the tool rather than working with it (“I clicked this card to select it, not for you to move it by 5 pixels”)

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Looks like we did all the things in today’s release

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