Prefer exploring these tips on a whiteboard straight away? Click here to open the corresponding whiteboard in the Welcome Space
Grab a cup of tea, put on your favorite tunes, and let’s dive into the world of creativity! 🎨
Here’s what you’ll discover:
Use the Right Tools: We’ll explore the essential tools at your disposal. From brushes to erasers, we’ll make sure you’re equipped for artistic success.
Make It Look Nice: Beauty lies in the details! Learn how to arrange elements, choose colors, and create eye-catching designs.
Make It Stay Nice 😉: Maintenance matters! Discover tips to keep your whiteboard organized, clutter-free, and visually appealing.
Engage Others: Collaboration is key! Whether you’re brainstorming with colleagues or teaching a class, we’ll cover strategies to involve everyone.
Keyboard Shortcuts: Need to speed things up? We’ve got some nifty shortcuts to boost your productivity.
The Whiteboards on Alkemio utilize the open-source Excalidraw API. Kudos to their remarkable work!
Ready to dive in? Here we go! ✨
You might have noticed that the whiteboard has 2 main menus:
Although you can use the “text” tool, we recommend using the “Square” tool instead:
The arrow tool can be used ‘standalone’, or you can connect it to one (or two) shape(s). Once you select the arrow tool and hover over a shape, a transparent border will appear. Click here to connect the arrow. By attaching it, the arrow will stick to the shape, also when you move the latter. Arrows (and lines) are straight by default, but it is possible to add a curve. To do so, select the arrow, click on the circle in the center, and drag this up or down to create your curve. 🎯
And there’s more! Don’t hesitate to explore all the tools in the tool menu and the various editing options in the edit menu. You can use different shapes, the pencil tool enables you to draw freehand, you can also upload images, and much more.
Alkemio has a library with many whiteboards that you can use. Click on the “Find Template” button next to the title in the top left of your screen.
Messy whiteboard? Try aligning the content. Quickly select all elements by dragging your mouse across them, and scroll down the edit menu in the left pane. There you’ll find the Align option, which you can use to align all elements to the left, right, bottom, or top. The two buttons on the right allow you to do something even cooler: to evenly divide the space between elements!
Please note that the align options only become visible once you’ve selected multiple elements. When elements are already grouped together, you’ll have to ungroup them before you can align.
Aligning elements on the go? Try copying a block by selecting it, and then holding the alt-key when you drag your mouse away. If you also hold the shift-key, the element automatically aligns horizontally or vertically with the origin.
To make the border color different from the text color, follow these steps:
If you have a nice structure in place, you don’t want it to get mixed up when you or someone else changes (eg) some text. Select all the elements that you want to group together, right-click on your mouse and choose “group selection”. These things now stay together. You can drag them around as a whole, or edit content inside the group by clicking on the element a couple of times to get “inside” the group. 🧩
When working with various elements on a whiteboard, mistakes are prone to happen. Especially background blocks get moved by accident all. the. time. To prevent this from happening, you can lock things that shouldn’t be changed. Right-click the element and select “Lock” or use the keyboard shortcut: CTRL + SHIFT + L. Unlocking the element also goes very easy: right-click on it and choose “Unlock” or CTRL + SHIFT + L. Unlocking everything on the whiteboard can be done by right-clicking an empty place on the board and choosing “Unlock all”. Locking multiple elements? Consider grouping them first! This way, you can unlock everything at once, instead of having to unlock every item separately when you need to make a couple of changes. 🔒
To select multiple objects that you want to group, lock, or move, you can do so by holding down the SHIFT key while clicking on each object. Another way to select multiple objects quickly is to drag your mouse around the objects. Make sure to encircle everything completely, because if you miss even a small corner, the object won’t be selected. Please note that any items that are currently locked will not be included in this selection. 🖱️
Press the space bar of your keyboard to turn your mouse pointer into a little hand. Click somewhere on the board, hold your mouse pressed and drag it around. This is a quick way to move to another place on the board if you know where you need to go. If you’re unsure where to go, use the little button next to the zoom controls to get an overview of the entire board. If you hold down the SHIFT key while scrolling with your mouse wheel, you can scroll horizontally on the whiteboard instead of vertically.
Instead of copying and pasting, you can duplicate an element by selecting it, pressing the ALT key, and dragging it to the desired location. When duplicating elements while holding SHIFT, they will remain aligned horizontally or vertically with the original element.
Sometimes the font size is simply too big to nicely fit in your design. When this text is inside a shape and you don’t want to resize the shape, simply select all text in it (CTRL+A) and use the keyboard combination above.
Use your CTRL key together with the square bracket keys to move items forward or backward. You might need to click a couple of times before you get the right result, so often it is faster to move one of the objects completely to the front or back. When adding an object, simply put it to the background by clicking CTRL+SHIFT+[. This makes it very simple to later add a background to your board: just put it on top of everything and then use this keyboard shortcut.
Make sure to lock all elements that others shouldn’t be changing. Consider grouping them first, so it’s quicker to unlock parts of your whiteboard when you need to edit something.
During interactive sessions, consider adding text blocks with a placeholder, such as “
Consider using blocks to break down multi-step processes or questions into manageable chunks.
I hope these improved instructions help you and others to use whiteboards on Alkemio more effectively! 😊