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September 11, 2011

Markup – Draw Anywhere

Markup is a tool that people can use to draw directly on the web pages they’re viewing. Rather than taking screen grabs of websites, marking up those saved images in Photoshop, and then sharing those marked up files with colleagues via email, professionals in the design community can use Markup to share their thoughts and ideas about any website in seconds.

Getting started with Markup is simple. Drag the Markup tool to the bookmarks bar on your web browser to begin using the app. Next, head to whatever website you’re planning on marking up. A few examples of the sites you may want to work with would be a site your graphic design team is collaborating on or a website that you’re using as inspiration for a project that’s in the works. Markup offers a handful of tools that you can use to write and draw on websites, however the most important is the Magic Marker tool. Don’t worry about being perfect when you draw arrows, circles, and straight lines, since the Magic Marker tool will automatically correct your drawings and turn them into geometrically correct shapes. Other tools that are available to use include the box tool, the circle tool, the text tool, and the color tool. Use the size selector to adjust the thickness of certain marks you’ve already made. You can also rearrange the markups you’ve created on the page by dragging and dropping them in whichever way you please.

When you’re finished marking up a page, click “Publish” on the Markup toolbar. Markup will immediately generate a unique URL that you can use to share your project with colleagues via email or IM. The people you’ve shared with can respond to your project by adding marks of their own or starting fresh with their own blank pages.

Practical Uses:

  • Collaborate with colleagues when designing a new website layout
  • Get ideas from similar websites when building your own
  • Share your favorite parts of a particular site with your web design team
  • Show your employees what does not work about the site they’ve designed

Insider Tips:

  • Use the bookmarklet to quickly access Markup’s tools
  • Each published page gets its own URL
  • Click Control + Z to undue any marks you’ve made on a page
  • Users can make annotated notes with the text tool

What we liked:

  • Markup requires no downloads or installs to use
  • Drawings with the Magic Marker tool are automatically transformed into geometric shapes
  • Marked up pages are not visible to anyone else until they’re published
  • Colleagues can collaborate on marked up pages without using email or sending documents back and forth

What we didn’t like:

  • All published Markup pages are public and they cannot be hidden with a password

Alternatives:

Company Info:

  • Launched: October 2010 (Beta)
  • Privately Held
  • Headquarters: Chattanooga, Tennessee
  • Founded by: Medium
  • Web site: http://markup.io

Costs:

  • Free

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