With this release we’ve added some new features that should make working with Gliffy a lot easier.

New Document Manager

The first new feature you’ll notice is an enhanced document manager. Since our service has been out for over a year now, users have had a chance to create many Gliffy diagrams like flow charts and network diagrams. Our most active users have literally hundreds of diagrams and the new document manager will make sorting through large numbers of documents much easier.

• The document manager now takes up more of the screen which enables us to provide more information to you than ever
• Diagrams can now be tagged to enable large numbers of documents to be managed and organized easier. Create a tag by entering a tag name under ‘Create new tag’, and then drag documents onto a tag to apply it. A document may have multiple tags applied to it.
• We now have a preview feature which will make finding that favorite diagram of yours faster without having to actually open up the document. When a diagram is clicked once in the diagram list, a preview of that diagram is shown making it easier to see what the document is before you open it.

Larger default diagram size by default

Previously, the default document size was meant to imitate a standard sized piece of paper. In reality, we’re not tied to paper as much in the wonderful internet enabled world. As a result, we’ve decided to break with tradition an enable a much larger drawing area by default (5000 X 5000 pixels)

We think this should make creating new drawings a lot more user friendly since you wont be constrained by a single page. You’ll also find that when you ‘publish’ or export a document, the resulting document is automatically sized to match the contents of the drawing. Slick, eh?

Other minor improvements

• Grid size changes when zooming
• Default Text Format. When making text style changes, they get remembered for faster diagram editing.
• Zooming using drop down should keep page positioned to center of view on page to make diagram navigation easier.
• Uploaded Animated GIFs should not break export/publish
• Performance using hand tool and scrollbars with large diagrams with the grid on is greatly improved.
• Various other minor bugs fixed for your drawing pleasure

Clint pointed out this great post about using Gliffy Online combined with Google Docs as an agile way to use Gliffy’s Flow Chart tools for software documentation. Very slick.

On Monday we updated Gliffy Online with a bunch of small bug fixes and other minor improvements. Check out the list below for more information.

New features

* Improved Image rendering performance
* Ability to “lock” a shape
* Easier to make horizontal and vertical lines with straight line tool
* More entity-relationship line types
* Prettier Server symbol in network shapes for
* New Mail Server symbol
* New Mainframe symbol
* New Database server symbol
* Prettier laptop symbol
* Prettier printer symbol
* Prettier hub symbol
* New stairs symbols in floorplan shapes for pretty floor plan diagrams
* Prettier door symbols
* Vertical Rule in user interface shapes for pretty user interface diagrams
* Displaying what revision is open
* Big Collaborate Diagram button under properties
* Published diagrams render faster

Bug Fixes

* Text format changes do not force save to diagram
* Snap to grid doesn’t work when dragging shape off of a symbol library
* Uploading super thin images
* Crooked connector lines
* Connector Line goes crooked out of center point on shapes

A fairly large percentage of our users are educators or students, and we’re happy to see that we beat out two of our competitors to be named as one of the Top 25 Web 2.0 apps to Improve a Student’s or Professor’s Productivity by the Online Education Database. Cool stuff!

The Gliffy Plugin for Confluence is the first product that we charge for. We had what we thought was a pretty good month in December, so we thought we’d celebrate with a round of Golf at the Half Moon Bay Ocean Course. The weather was great. Not bad for January, eh?

Clint enjoying a fine day on the course

Clint is a golfing fanatic. There is a reason why a few of our examples involve golf. Me….. I’ve golfed 3-4 times in the last…. um…. 5 years, but with some good tips from my Dad when we golfed last month, and some more help from Clint, I managed to get through 18 holes without loosing too many balls.

Clint has some excellent commentary as I do my (ahem) best putting of the day:

In the mean time, we’ve been working hard wrapping up some new features for hosted Gliffy. We’re really excited about the new features, and you should expect to hear more about these in the next few days.

At approximately 1:55AM PST on December 19th, 2006, the primary and secondary DNS servers we use to manage the gliffy.com domain became unavailable. These DNS issues caused problems for anyone attempting to access gliffy.com through the web, or any emails sent to gliffy.com. As soon as we became aware of the problem, we added additional DNS servers. Unfortunately, it can take some time for the additional DNS servers to take hold. Everything should be back to normal by the time the new DNS changes take effect (1-2 days) or when the previous primary and secondary DNS servers come back online. We know that the DNS changes have already begun propagating, so we expect everything will be back to normal soon.

This problem is the result of us relying on a single vendor for DNS. We will drastically reduce the likelihood of this issue happening again by using a total of 3 vendors for DNS, which will include 6 DNS servers. Hopefully this will help prevent any issues of this nature in the future.

We understand that having the gliffy.com service available at all times is critical to making this model work. Please accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience this issue has caused, and know that we are working hard to improve reliability of the service.

- Chris, Clint, and the Gliffy team

We’re always on the look out for how Gliffy is being used out there in the real world. We love to find examples of Gliffy helping people share their ideas with others, no matter how big or small. We’ve already seen a number of uses in the business and educational spaces. Thus, we are going to start sharing some of these with you, our blog readers and Gliffy fans.

For this issue, we found a blog for the study of case-based curriculum of clinical medicine (http://casesblog.blogspot.com/). In there, a blogger was discussing DPP-4 Inhibitors for the treatment of diabetes. The blog posting goes into a detailed view of a new medication called DPP-4 Inhibitor that helps create higher levels of the Glucogin-like peptide (GLP-1), which in turn increases insulin secretion and inhibits glucogen release. This is key for people with diabetes. Now if you’re like me, reading much of the article with my fear of chemistry I got from high school was no easy task. Thankfully, the writer has included a nice easy-to-understand Gliffy flow diagram in the blog to visually show the process of how DDP-4 inhibitors work.

If you have a shiny example of how Gliffy is helping others collaborate ideas, please write me at clint (at) gliffy (dot) com.

Also, if you’d like to use Gliffy to add a live image to your blog or web page, you can use our publish feature. Once you’ve created your diagram, just use Share –> Publish, and Gliffy will provide you with instructions on how to embed your diagram.

In the meantime, thanks for using Gliffy!

- Clint Dickson, Co-founder

It’s been about 2 months since we opened the Gliffy beta to the world, and we’re happy to announce that we have over 35,000 registered users (and we haven’t even been mentioned on TechCrunch yet… hint hint, nudge nudge ).

We’ve just released a new version of Gliffy which includes a snap-to-grid feature. This was a much requested feature by many users. Any current document will have snap-to-grid disabled by default, but new documents will have snap-to-grid enabled by default. To change snap-to-grid for a document, click on a blank area of the stage, and select the ’snap to grid’ checkbox.

We’ve also fixed a number of bugs. We appreciate all the feedback you have provided us and your patience as we improve the service. We did have some down time in the last two months, and we are working diligently to ensure maximum uptime moving forward. Notable bug fixes include:

- Various bugs which caused published or exported images not to render
- Bug where AOL users couldn’t use Gliffy at all
- General reliability and scalability infrastructure improvements

We have also been working very hard on two new surprises which are coming “real soon now”. Stay tuned!

I’ll be presenting at the STIRR mixer on Wednesday night in Palo Alto. If you’re there, please stop by and say ‘Hi!’ to me or Clint.

Update: STIRR was covered by local TV station KPIX. There are a few short clips about Gliffy.

- Rick Broida, Computer Shopper - “Sure, you could shell out big bucks for Microsoft Visio—or you could use Gliffy for all your diagramming needs.”
- Chris Harris, School Library Journal - “…an upstart Web site just might have what it takes to knock down a long established software package.”
- KPIX covers STIRR - Gliffy is mentioned in this local TV piece
- Paul Veneziam, InfoWorld - Gliffy makes it look easy
- Rafe Needleman, CNet - Gliffy, the online Visio killer
- Kate Russell, BBC World - “…a brilliant tool…”
- Lifehacker - “Whether you’re creating flow charts, floor plans, or pretty much anything you’d consider a diagram, Gliffy actually looks like it can handle it.”
- Saeed Richardson, Duke Univ. Macromedia Users Group - “Don’t have Visio? Try gliffy.com!”
- Pete Cashmore at Mashable - “it’s far superior to anything else out there”
- Solution Watch - “Overall, Gliffy was not only very helpful for creating diagrams, but I also found it being a lot of fun to use.”
- Michael Sica - “gliffy is pretty impressive.”
- Fred Cavazza (english translation) - translated quote: “…very impressive.”
- A Zulu In Silicon Valley - “This is really cool if you’re looking to share flowcharts, which is currently a huge pain of MS Visio.”
- Ben Atkin - “…I am pretty impressed by the program overall.”
- Billy BLOGirlardo - Making A Diagram In A Jiffy With Gliffy
- Francine Lévesque - “…I find the features are easy to navigate and use”
- Tom Smith’s: theOTHERblog - “I like it.”
- David Warlick - “Very cool”
- Roger Kondrat - “Finally a product that is easy to use…”
- Snoring how to stop - “Very fun.”
- REMC Ramblings - “I really like it.”
- Leigh Blackall - Teach and Learn Online - I love this tool. Gliffy.com I love you!!
- Solo Technology - I’d say these guys have the diagramming slice of web office apps cornered.
- snipperoo - “Very nicely implemented.”
- The Tech Savvy Educator - “Gliffy is everything a concept mapping tool should be…”
- Google Blogsearch for Gliffy
- Technorati search for gliffy