Moving diagrams
When a topic is about how parts connect and what moves between them, the slide is a moving diagram. A request crosses a network, messages pass between services, data flows through a pipeline, or a value moves through a structure, and you watch it happen.
The diagram follows the narration. Each step plays when the narrator reaches it, then holds while the narrator keeps talking. The next step starts at the next point in the explanation.
A step shows everything its words describe, and what it brings in stays on screen until a later step changes it.
What it suits
- Requests and messages between parties, such as a browser, a server and a database
- Data moving through a pipeline of named stages
- A system's components and how they connect
- A state machine stepping through its states
- A data structure changing as values pass through it
A moving diagram shows up to six parts at once, each with a short label. It looks the same in the light and dark site themes, and in a small embedded player it fills the room it has.
Getting good moving diagrams
Name the parts and the path between them: show a request going from the browser through the load balancer to one of three servers. For motion in maths or geometry, such as a curve being traced, the lesson uses an animation. For a still picture of structure, see Diagrams.
Explainers made before moving diagrams existed keep their diagram slides.