Gliffy is looking for an awesome client side software developer who is interested in working on our highly interactive web based diagram editor with some other very smart and creative developers. We’re a bootstrapped, profitable software company with a focus on bringing great experiences to customers. Benefits include (but are not limited to) a company credit card, and we’ll even pay your phone bill for you!

Know someone awesome who we should talk to? Refer us and you’ll get a $1000 referral bonus.

Learn more here:

http://www.gliffy.com/jobs/

Thx!

-chris

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.

Happy drawing and long live Terrans!

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.

GLIFFY-2421: Venn Diagram cannot be rendered

Download the Gliffy Plugin for Confluence 3.0.2

Download the Gliffy Plugin for JIRA 3.0.2

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:

Gliffy Plugin for Confluence 3.0.1
Gliffy Plugin for JIRA 3.0.1

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.

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:

• JIRA ISSUES – SWF9E
• JIRA ISSUES – SWF9F
• JIRA ISSUES – SWF9G

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!

Gliffy Confluence Plugin 2.2.1 and Gliffy JIRA Plugin 2.2.1 contain two bugs fixes for issues reported by a small subset of customers:

• [GLIFFY-2123] – Installing a free license for confluence after setting up gliffy free trial gives invalid number of nodes error
• [GLIFFY-2125] – System error when creating a Gliffy diagram – When pressing “Create Diagram”

We suggest all customers upgrade to this release  (Confluence | JIRA) .

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!

Today we’re releasing what is by far the most important Gliffy plugins for JIRA and Confluence that we’ve ever put out. This release is the culmination of nearly 6 months of work that we’ve put into improving the speed, performance, and quality of our drawing tool which is designed to make it easy to add Flowcharts, Class Diagrams, UI Diagrams, and other types of drawings to JIRA and Confluence. There are over 100 improvements, bug fixes and enhancements in the Gliffy Diagram Tool. How big is this release?

Release notes for:

- Gliffy Confluence Plugin 2.2.0

- Gliffy JIRA Plugin 2.2.0

Improvements in the Gliffy Editor

These improvements apply to both the JIRA and Confluence Plugins

Faster! – The Gliffy editor has been re-tooled to take advantage of Flash 9, which means it’s fast! This also means that you have to have Flash 9 on your computer for Gliffy to work, but our research suggests most people are using Flash 10 by now anyways, so this shouldn’t be a problem for most.

Line tool is WAY better – When re-arranging shapes that have lines connected to them, the lines do what you expect. Also, lines can optionally have rounded corners which makes them look much better.

Help and User Manual – Earlier this year we created a detailed user manual to help new users get started more quickly. Inside the product, we now also include a list of keyboard shortcuts to save you time.
Faster Zoom – The zoom feature has been re-written, and it’s incredibly fast.
Mouse Scroll Wheel – You can now scroll through your diagram using the mouse wheel, or hold down shift and use the mouse wheel to zoom in.
Right Click Menu Options – Right clicking will help make copying/pasting and some other operations faster
True WYSIWYG editing – Previously, diagrams in JIRA issues or Confluence pages sometimes looked different than they did in the Gliffy editor. This has been fixed, and you’ll get much better results than previously.
Tons of bug fixes – So many little issues have been fixed that it’s hard to list them all, but let’s just say many of those annoying issues you may have noticed before have been addressed.
Gliffy Confluence Plugin License Changes – We’re trying something new with our license keys. For organizations who already have developer,demonstration, non-profit, open source, or community licenses, you’ll be able to use Gliffy without obtaining an additional license key from us. We hope this will help save time for everyone. Let us know what you think!
Gliffy Confluence Plugin no border on diagrams by default – By popular request, we no longer add borders to diagrams by default in Confluence. We think this is a great idea, and makes diagrams look a lot better inside Confluence pages.
JIRA 4.1 Compatibility – JIRA 4.1 is due out shortly, and we’ve addressed several compatibility issues to ensure Gliffy works as intended.

Just a quick note to let everyone know we’ve made a minor change to our Gliffy Online Terms of Service which make the service less restrictive in relation to the usage by minors. The change is in bold below:

User certifies to Gliffy that if User is an individual (i.e., not a corporation or institution) User is at least 18 years of age. Users who are under 18 may use the Services only with the involvement of a parent, guardian, or teacher. User also certifies that it is legally permitted to use the Services and access the Site, and takes full responsibility for the selection and use of the Services and access of the Site. This Agreement is void where prohibited by law, and the right to access the Site is revoked in such jurisdictions.