We’ve just released an update to Gliffy Online, coinciding with the release of Starcraft 2. This release contains numerous tweaks and fixes to our systems. We did manage to sprinkle in a few new features, too. Here are a few of the highlights of this release:
Fixed the rendering of ERD line endings
Fixed flat edges on Basic and Flowchart Classic skin shapes that had no border
Grouping of certain shapes not remembered across saves
Link maps are now exact in published diagrams
Moved ad banner so it doesn’t block text properties
Added a few new templates and improved others
BPMN Annotation line does not disappear now in SVG export
Added a shortcut, F2, to automatically edit text on an object
Folder list in document manager disappearing
Added border around Account Images to better see smaller uploaded images
Fixed a few issues around saving when someone had logged into another instance of Gliffy
Click here to see a full list of issues resolved in this release.
Today we released the 3.0.2 version of the Gliffy Plugins for Confluence and JIRA. This release was to fix an issue where certain installations were not allowing some of our symbol libraries (like Venn symbols) to be loaded.
Back in 2005 when Clint, myself, and the other founders of Gliffy were contemplating what sort of product we wanted to build for our little startup, we generally focused on one central idea. We believed that most desktop software would be moving onto the web, and by leveraging our unique experience of building rich web applications, we could be a significant part of that movement.
When Google announced the Google Apps Marketplace earlier this year, a huge advancement in this movement was made. The barriers to getting small businesses on board with the web based software movement had been reduced dramatically, and we knew that it was important to integrate with this exciting new delivery platform to help fulfill our original vision.
Let’s back up for a moment… what is Google Apps? Google Apps is a Google product where by Google will host your organization’s email in one place, AND all the members of your organization can also get access to the other Google Apps such as spreadsheets, presentations, and more. At Gliffy, for example, we use Google Apps for our email (via Gmail), and it saves us the hassle of having to run our own mail server. With Gmail at the center of this experience, Google Apps becomes a natural portal for launching into other web based applications.
If you use Google Apps, and you are an administrator of your Google Apps domain, you can add Gliffy to your Google Apps by clicking on this button:
Click on the “Add it now” button on the Gliffy Listing page. From there, you can either create a new Gliffy account to link to your Google Apps Domain, or link an existing Gliffy account to your Google Apps Domain. After you’ve set everything up, make sure you enabled Gliffy in your Google Apps Management Dashboard or already did so in the setup process. Finally, make sure to refresh your Gmail browser window, and you should see Gliffy show up under the “more” menu. You can now log into Gliffy and create diagrams straight from your Google Apps without logging into Gliffy! Here is a great video that explains this process in more detail.
This is just the beginning. There are many great integration points with Google that we plan to leverage in the future. If you have some specific ideas about how we could integrate better with Google, or have any other feedback, please let us know!
Today we’re releasing the Gliffy Plugin for Confluence 3.0.1 and Gliffy Plugin for JIRA 3.0.1. The purpose of this release is to fix a few nagging bugs with the 3.0.0 version. Highlights of this release are:
Printing (Exporting) to PDF - When you print a diagram, it now prints to PDF. This allows us better consistency of the printing output across Browsers, Operating Systems and Flash player versions. This feature is located in the file menu.
Snap using the SHIFT key – Stretching or moving a shape will now snap in 5px increments. This in conjunction with the Drawing guides should help overall sizing and alignment in a diagram
Templates open to the correct symbol library - When you open a template that uses a specific skin or style, the skin or style will open by default in the symbol library
For a complete list of features and bug fixes, follow the links below:
Starting at approximately 2:20PM PDT on Sunday June 20th, the Gliffy.com website came under a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.
A DDoS attack is when the bad guys use many many hacked computers to send arbitrary requests at our servers.
This in turn overwhelms our servers which can’t handle the massive amount of traffic. These are very difficult attacks to defend against because of the distributed nature of the attack.
In the last 24 hours, our network engineers have been working to disrupt this attack. It took us a while to find a solution, but we believe we are now adequately protected from the attack. We have contingency plans in place in the event that the attack resumes with more vigor.
We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused our users. We probably could have been better prepared to deal with this particular issue, and we are learning from this event so that we can prevent such attacks in the future. This type of attack did not involve our servers being hacked, so your data continues to be safe and secure.
To stay up to date about the very latest in regards to the Gliffy.com website status, please subscribe to our @gliffy twitter account.
Update 11:23AM PST: We are still seeing the site come up and down. We have contingency plans in place in the event that we are unable to successfully deflect the attack with our current methods. We’re keeping the specifics to ourselves since it’s likely the attackers are reading this, but we want our users to know we are continuing to work on a solution.
Update 03:01PM PST: The site is much more stable right now, however we are still experiencing some problems. We’re posting more frequent updates to our @gliffy twitter account, so please check in there for the most up to date information.
Update 05:14PM PST: Our confidence is increasing that we have a solid handle on this now. We’ve consulted with various experts on the topic, and we have contingency plans in place in the event that the attack overwhelms us again. Please follow our @gliffy twitter account, to stay informed about the latest.
The Atlassian Summit 2010 is here! It’s one of our favorite times of the year for many reasons, one being it means we’ve got a big release just for you. Introducing the Gliffy Plugin for Confluence 3.0 for Atlassian Confluence and the Gliffy Plugin for JIRA 3.0 for Atlassian JIRA. Version 3.0 includes exciting new features such as new symbols, templates, line tool improvements, and drawing guides.
New Symbols
Yes, it’s been a while since we’ve added new symbols, but we’ve made some vast upgrades in our architecture that will allow us to put out beautiful new symbols more often. The first batch includes Venn diagram shapes and Sitemap shapes. Venn diagrams are perfect for showing relationships between things:
The new Venn shapes
Want to show your CEO how your companies initiatives will be presented throughout the new website you are building? Use Gliffy’s hot new Site Map shapes to impress. Site-maps are an integral part of web-site design that shows how a site is accessed and organized:
The new Site Map shapes
Finally, we’ve also added new fresh skins for our Basic and Flowchart shapes that will add sparkle to your diagrams. You can still use our classic skins too, located via the dropdown under each respective tab on the left hand side of Gliffy.
The new Fresh skin for Flowchart shapes
Templates
By popular demand, we’re proud to introduce templates to the plugins. When you add a diagram to a Confluence page or JIRA issue, you are immediately given the option to create a type of diagram based from a template provided by us (i.e. flowchart, floor plan, UML, etc.), or a template from your existing design (Confluence only). You can also use a template that can be stored on your computer using our new Import/Export Gliffy XML feature. This is very useful if you want to take a diagram you did in Gliffy Online and use it in Confluence or JIRA. Note to Confluence users: we have removed the Document Manager since it’s purpose previously was for copying an existing diagram to create a new diagram. The Template Manager now does this in a more elegant fashion.
The Template Manager showing a UML template
Line Tool Improvements
We’ve also made some big improvements to our connector line tool. You can now add curved lines, quadratic bezier curves to be exact. Plus, we’ve added a new arrow type that can be accessed via the line ends property drop-down. You can also create lines that have a fill color and a border color. To do this, select a line, make the width of the line 3px or more (third selection on line width drop down or lower), and select a fill color. Viola! To change the border color, select a line color for that line.
Curved lines
Drawing Guides
Finally, we’ve added drawing guides. To turn the drawing guides on, click anywhere on the visible page and you will see a “drawing guides” checkbox under the document properties. Check it to turn the guides on. When you drag a shape on the visible page, guides will show for different alignments. A red line will show when a shape is aligned to the center of another shape, and a green line will show when an edge is aligned to the edge of another shape. The drawing guides have replaced snap-to-grid.
Aligning shapes by center
Aligning shapes by left edge
Chris put together this nice video to show you some of our new features in action:
New features in action in Confluence
To see a complete list of bug fixes and other improvements, click below:
Just can’t believe we’re almost into the middle of 2010 already! How does the saying go? “Time flies when you’re making diagrams”?
As always, we’ve been hard at work making improvements to Gliffy. This latest update to Gliffy Online has some great new features and improvements.
First, new symbols! Yes, it’s been a while since we’ve added new symbols, but we’ve made some vast upgrades in our architecture that will allow us to put out beautiful symbols more often. The first batch includes Venn diagram shapes and Sitemap shapes. Venn diagrams are perfect for showing relationships between things:
Site-maps are an integral part of web-site design that shows the how a site is accessed and organized:
The next big feature we’ve added is Templates. When you create a new diagram, you are now given the option to create a type of diagram based from a template provided by us (i.e. flowchart, floor plan, UML, etc.), or a template from your own existing design. You can also use a template that can be stored on your computer using our new Import/Export Gliffy XML feature.
Finally, we’ve made some big improvements to our connector line tool. You can now create curved lines in Gliffy, quadratic bezier curves to be exact. Plus, we’ve added a new arrow type that can be accessed via the line ends property drop-down. You can also create lines that have a fill color and a border color. To do this, select a line, make the width of the line 3px or more (third selection on line width drop down or lower), and select a fill color. Viola! To change the border color, select a line color for that line.
We’ve also made a multitude of bug fixes and other improvements to the system. Here is a complete list:
We hope all of these features contribute to the success of your diagram in the next big board meeting, resulting in many pats on the back. If you have any suggestions or issues with Gliffy, please don’t hesitate to contact us!
The big news out there today is that the new iPhone OS 4 SDK Developer Program License Agreement has a clause in it that essentially bans Flash applications which have been re-compiled to run on the iPhone and iPad using the Adobe CS5 cross-compiler.
That means Flash applications can’t easily be ported to run on the iPhone or iPad. Yikes!
We’ll see if this new clause sticks, leaving many tens of thousands of Flash and Flex developers in a rough spot. The good news is that Gliffy was built using OpenLaszlo. OpenLaszlo is a great little cross-compiler tool that compiles rich internet applications into multiple runtimes including Flash and DHTML. That’s good news for our customers as it means we should (in theory) be able to produce a version of Gliffy that runs on the iPad and iPhone.
A big thank-you to the OpenLaszlo team for your amazing product!
