Since I need to prototype a few web tools in the near future, I’ve been casting around to update the stack I use for that. The last time I consciously did that was several years ago, so I’ve had a lot to experiment with in order to catch up and land on some new practices that will help me quickly try out ideas in a way that will be appealing to use and to maintain in 2020 and 2021.

That will get a longer, dedicated write-up when I feel like I’ve settled on something. I’m close.

While sketching out some ideas, I ran across excalidraw. It’s a dead-simple (web based) drawing tool for making diagrams of things like information flow. I’m not sure how I’ve missed that; it’s been around for months and it’s exactly the kind of thing I regularly need. And all the source is available, and it looks easy to self-host.

Hopefully by mentioning it here, I’m more likely to remember it than to beat my head against inkscape or dia next time I reach for something similar.