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 JIRA Plugin 2.2.2 addresses an issue with JIRA 4.1:

• [GLIFFY-2168] – Cannot see the top bars in Gliffy in JIRA 4.1 on Firefox on Windows

We recommend all customers running JIRA 4.1 upgrade to this release  (Plugin Download) .

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.

With the first quarter of 2010 behind us, we’ve taken a look at the progress we’ve made as a company, and it’s just amazing. We started Gliffy almost exactly 5 years ago in my living room, and now we’ve got great customers, a real office, revenue, and awesome employees and contractors who have helped us grow the business in so many ways.

2005 photo of Chris and Clint working out some of the math that was programed into Gliffy

In 2010 we’ve already accomplished some truly fantastic milestones:

Customers – Without you, we wouldn’t be here. Keep the great feedback coming! Gliffy Online now has over 500,000 registered users. Half a million. Wow!
Product – We’ve made huge strides in increasing the quality and features of our product. Our Gliffy Online customers have been enjoying the faster performance, improved quality, and new features that started rolling out in January and have been continuing to come in the last few months. Our Confluence Plugin and JIRA Plugin customers will see these same benefits in our best plugins ever, which we’ll be releasing early next week.
Revenue – Is the economy roaring back? We think so. Our Q1 2010 bookings have increased by over 50% since Q4 2009 despite lots of new competition in the marketplace. Holy smokes! This is the ultimate indicator that we may be at an inflection point for growth and that we are clearly the market leader. We’re investing this money directly back into the company to help improve the product in many ways.
Team – We moved into a new office in San Francisco last month, and we are now expanding our kick-ass team so that we can keep improving our offering for our customers. Keep you eyes open or follow the gliffy twitter feed as we announce job openings.
Funding (or lack there of) – Gliffy was the first to market with an easy to use web based diagramming solution that helps customers add rich visuals to their documents, and we did it without raising any outside funding at all. I can’t say we’ll never raise money, but the fact that we’re cash flow positive today (and have been for several years) means we’re going to be here for a long time to come.
Competition – 2009 brought us an increase in competition, which has served to validate our class of drawing tool as a valuable one for customers. This hasn’t shaken our confidence one bit. Gliffy is THE leader in this space and the only reasonable choice for customers given that our competition either depends on funding to keep the lights on, or represent one man shops. Gliffy, on the other hand, is growing at a rapid pace, and will be here for the long haul.

To our customers, thank you! We have lots of great stuff to share with you in the coming months so stay tuned.

To our Employees, keep up the good work! We’re just getting started with this little company that we’re so proud of.

2010 has already been a crazy and productive year at Gliffy. We’ve successfully moved our office headquarters into a beautiful new space that will surely invigorate our creative juices, and we’ve also been busy improving the quality and usability of Gliffy Online. These improvements include upgrading our server architecture, eliminating many of the rare yet complex bugs that our system and helpful customers notify us of, and tweaking our interface so that you can create more impressive diagrams with ease.

You’ve probably already noticed that we’ve vastly improved the output of our exported PNG images and the look of the published diagram landing pages. For images, the text and colors should now be accurate with what you see in the editor, and you can still export up to our 5000 x 5000 pixel limit. Also, the SVG export feature provides inline images (no more zip files) and handles all international characters correctly.

The other big improvement is with our Connector/Line tool. Our old version of the connector tool seemed to have a mind of it’s own at times. The new connector tool will now route itself in ways that you would expect, and you can make adjustments to a segmented line and those adjustments will stick when moving connected shapes. Also, you can now add rounded corners to the right-angle segmented lines. This should be ideal for Business Process diagrams or for making your flowcharts look more elegant. With a line selected, you will notice a new “Line Type” property drop-down in the Line Properties area on the top right of Gliffy. To top it off, we’ve added more connection points to commonly used shapes like rectangles, processes, etc.

Here are links to a vast list of the other bugs we’ve fixed and improvements we’ve made:

• JIRA ISSUES – SWF9B
• JIRA ISSUES – SWF9C
• JIRA ISSUES – SWF9D

We’ve got some really exciting things we’re working on in the next few months, so stay tuned!!

We’re upgrading our server hardware, and rolling out some product updates between 7PM-7:30PM PST on Wednesday February 24th. This upgrade will require some downtime of the gliffy.com website and the Gliffy Online service.

If you experience save errors during this window, please wait until after 7:30PM PST, and save again.

The entire Gliffy staff is proud to provide our Gliffy Users with (drum roll please) the Gliffy User Manual

Now, as you work on your complicated Network Diagrams or fancy Flow Charts, you can easily search for basic how-to’s, hints, tips and features in the Gliffy User Manual. We still cant help with shoveling snow, but we are happy to provide you with a way to navigate our application.

The current manual covers Gliffy Online, Gliffy Confluence Plugin, Gliffy JIRA Plugin. Wondering how to add links to your diagram or publish your diagram — It’s all in the manual.

Thanks to all for their hard work on pulling this long-awaited feature from a JIRA issue to reality.

Keep those suggestions for features coming — we love to create the program you love!

–Your Gliffy Team