3 Best Tools that you can use for writing an article that will surely Sky Rocket your article reader's experience.
Whenever I write technical articles on programming or development. I like to add some code snips and explanatory illustrations.
So here are some tools that I have used for a long time and a few just started to use.
1. Excalidraw
(This example image is created using poet.so)
The fascinating tool currently I have started using for my articles is Excalidraw.
(those articles are draft currently but soon will be released)
- It helps us create illustrative diagrams easily.
- It is Free & Open Source and basic features are more than enough. And need some more advanced features, you can just get a premium subscription called Excalidraw+.
- It has awesome collections of the library which has Icons, UML blocks and elements, and many more to create awesome explanatory diagrams.
Link : https://excalidraw.com/
excalidraw
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excalidraw
Virtual whiteboard for sketching hand-drawn like diagrams
2. Snappify
Who doesn't like to add some code snippets in their article?
So here is one amazing and easy-to-use tool that creates code snippets for us seamlessly.
- It is free with basic features and that's enough I guess for us to use in our article.
- It has customization for background gradient colour.
- Size customization option for the snippet image.
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Theme customization option.
Link : https://snappify.io/
3. Poet.so
Few a times we need to add a Twitter thread in our article.
For example, many folks do #100daysoflearning in public and they create a thread on Twitter, so if they want to add that Twitter thread snap in the article and can be done using poetso.
- We have the option to include likes, retweets, and comments responses in the tweet snap image.
- It has different background gradient color.
- Size customization option of the tweet snap.
Link : https://poet.so/
Top comments (13)
For code snippets, you could simply use an authoring platform that allows one to write monospaced blocks of text — for example
dev.tovia Markdown. Snappify is to work-around platforms that don't allow that.Tools like snappify.io and poet.so have the disadvantage of producing inaccessible content; you have to add alt attributes yourself, which can be really tedious for larger code examples.
It's a good thing not to directly access Twitter in your posts for privacy reasons, but make sure people can use copy&paste.
The code snippet is kind of disadvantage for large code for sure.
But when we want to write a tutorial blog/article we can break the code and create a few lines of code snippet.
So that we can create step by step tutorial. And even code snippet using snappify and other platforms/tools that does the same makes the article look more neat that was my main concern I added snappify into this list.
And yes about twitter thread snip even it has disadvantage it's makes inaccessible but let's assume one scenerio where you want to add useful twitter thread which is related to your article topic. You have 2 choices
When we add tweet snip in article, readers experience is much better than the embedded tweet links cause we let them read article easily without ruining reading experience by toggling between twitter and Devto or other blogging platforms.
And even adding both is also a great option.
Hey! Just wanted to mention that with snappify you can share accessible code snippets too :) .. Here is an example: snappify.io/view/bcc54061-6e8f-44c...
There you can also easily copy the code out of it.
It's also possible to embed them as an iframe on your websites.
Even I thought of adding Grammerly for typos and Canva for blog banner but later thought many people will be knowing about this 2 tools so didn't added.
Thanks 😊
Wow man the list is short but perfect tools
Thanks 👍
Great!!!!
😄
Woow!!! thanks for this awesome list. it's surely gonna make a difference in my articles
Welcome 😀.
And Happy Writing Articles 👍
Very thanks bro 🤗🤗🤗
😄