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I think it would be a very useful and quality-improving feature.

As for me, when I speak on something, I often have a visual representation of how it works, or something. It's obvious there are many things (in algorithms, or, say, UI) which are much easier understood with pictures and diagrams, than from scarce text.

So I'd really like here to be a special answer form, where you can attach some visual things to better explain your ideas.

I imagine this form as just a canvas with few painting tools and some basic blocks and patterns.

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    You can already add images (upload them or use one from the web). User Experience has Balsamiq Mockups for this purpose as a large deal of our questions need such visuals, and I think Electrical Engineering is looking at getting circuit diagrams
    – Zelda
    Commented Jul 7, 2012 at 15:29
  • I imagine that the team is going to treat this rather like MathJax (for LATeX): only to be considered on site where the need is pressing. The vast bulk of Stack Overflow question can be written and answered well without diagramatic support (we're got years and millions of posts to prove it) so it is unlikely to come to the site.
    – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
    Commented Jul 7, 2012 at 16:27
  • +1 for the idea, but I can fully understand if the SO community puts it in a low priority list due to the amount of work this would require for a good and non-invasive solution...
    – Thorsten S.
    Commented Jul 8, 2012 at 14:27

1 Answer 1

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The easy option: use an existing free online diagram tool, take a screenshot, and add it as an image.

The graphic design site has a question on flow chart / block diagram tools.

The UX site also offers Balsamiq for UI mockups in UX questions and answers for users with 10+ rep:

enter image description here

Note that the SE 'Image' upload/import tool now (on Mac, not tried on Windows) allows you to paste image data in directly, so on a Mac, you can just Cmd+Shift+Ctrl+4 it then paste straight into the 'Add an image > From the web' text box (and on Windows you can probably do the same with the Snipping Tool).

So you don't even need to save the screen grab as a file.

enter image description here

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  • I think you need >10 rep to be able to access the Balsamiq mockups on UX.SE. Not sure if that's 10 rep just on UX.SE or whether the 101 association bonus will cover it too. Really because it's not designed to be a free mockup tool for everyone to use without actually being a user of the site itself. Balsamiq would probably not like it being use for such purposes.
    – JonW
    Commented Apr 10, 2014 at 15:39
  • Ah okay, editted to clarify
    – user56reinstatemonica8
    Commented Apr 10, 2014 at 15:43

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