My Uninstalled Life

mxGraph is the a solution for drawing diagrams in a browser. Using open standards, mxGraph does not depend on any third-party plugins and proprietary software. mxGraph works straight out of the box, no client configuration, no plugin installation, no platform dependencies.

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From their newsletter: Gliffy is getting close to 1.3.0 release of the Gliffy Plugin for Confluence. The Gliffy Plugin for Confluence merges the best Enterprise Wiki, Confluence, with the best online diagramming solution, Gliffy. Sound interesting? Here’s a 2 minute video which shows this product in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYLabE6cfBE

The 1.3.0 release has been a big effort as they’ve also streamlined much of our code. Here is a taste of what it will have:

* A new document manager that will allow easy management of Gliffy diagrams within Confluence
* Copy/Paste support of diagrams content into other diagrams
* Ability to lock shapes
* More professional looking network symbols
* Additional Entity-Relationship connectors
* and much, much more!

Find out more about the plugin here:
http://www.gliffy.com/confluencePlugin/

Here are some of their favorite diagrams & drawings they’ve seen out there:

A wire-frame for an academic tool
Nice task flow with time-line
Seating chart
Geometry solution

CumulateLabs have updated their Cumulate Draw with the following new features:

1. Support for connector labels
2. Support for dashed lines, both on connectors and shapes. Look for “style” drop down on the toolbar
3. UTF-8 support
4. Windows User Interface Design Palette
5. Mac User interface Design palette

The latest source code is now available too! Don’t forget their blog.

The competitor to Microsoft Visio and Gliffy called Cumulate Draw is out with a new version.

This new version includes:

• Network shapes
• Support for text bounds
• Ability to change shape properties from properties box

BTW: Did you know you can download Cumulate Draw and publish it on your own tomcat or jetty server?

There aren’t that many Visio replacements available on the net. I wrote about the alternative Gliffy earlier, but there’s another alternative called Cumulate Draw.

At the moment, you don’t have to register to start drawing, you just press “draw” and it starts. You cannot store files on their servers but you open/save to your local harddrive.

Compared to Gliffy, it doesn’t rely on Flash and allows you to save all your work locally in SVG, JPG, PNG, PDF, and editable formats. It’s not as powerful as Gliffy and doesn’t have as many symbols but it haven’t been around for so long so make sure to check back often!

Oh and by the way, it’s open source! You can download the source and put it on your own servers.

My day-time is job is a System Consultant at one of the largest System Integrators/Outsourcing companies in Europe. I design and plan a lot of technical Infrastructure solutions for other companies. One of the most powerful tools I use everyday is Microsoft Visio to make blueprints, drawings, flowcharts, network diagrams etc. Could this application be the online web 2.0 appliecaion to replace my locally installed one?
So far I haven’t found any replacement on the Open Source market – but now there might be a solution on the web called Gliffy.

At first you notice the nice interface with true drag’n'drop features – just like any other locally installed applications. You can edit text on the fly, change colors, change size etc. The connector tools works nice when connecting objects.

There are somewhat 100 objects (symbols) already available: basic shapes, floorplan, user interface, network, UML and flow chart. This is a little limited if you want to do large drawings but works well for basic ones.

You cannot, as far as I know, import your own symbols. It would be nice if you could import Visio stencils and use the objects in those drawings since then you have all the possibilites since that are thousands of examples already in Visio that you could export and also available on the Internet.

You can export to JPG, PNG and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) but you can also store to your personal online storage which also includes an revision history of the file. You can also collaborate and publish drawings to the Internet.

Gliffy is still pretty basic but the interface have potential. With some more functions and the ability to get more objects, this could, in reality, really replace my Visio installation.

If you’re interested, check out these screenshots and example drawings and also a screencast so you could experience the interface.