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Gliffy Online Diagram Editor

One of the most powerful tools people use everyday is Microsoft Visio to make blueprints, drawings, flowcharts, network diagrams, etc. Could this application be the online web 2.0 application to replace Visio or similar application? Now there might be a solution on the web called Gliffy.

Gliffy is a free web-based diagram editor. It is being touted as the online visio killer. The client application is built using OpenLaszlo.

Gliffy Online Diagram Editor

Gliffy is a great tool that makes it easy to create, share, and collaborate on a wide range of diagrams. Gliffy is an online diagramming service that helps users communicate with a combination of shapes, text, and lines.

You will need to register to begin drawing. Once your account is established you will be asked to enter a document name. The next screen is the design space you can work with. Gliffy rely on Flash plugin which must installed in your browser.

Gliffy Online Diagram Editor

Gliffy comes with the nice interface with true drag and drop features — just like any other locally installed applications. You can select shapes, edit text on the fly, change colors, change size and so on. The auto-line connector tools works nice when connecting objects within Gliffy workspace.

Gliffy Online Diagram Editor

There are more than 100 objects (symbols) available in the library of shapes including networking, UML, user interface, process flow, entity-relationship, floor plans, and basic shapes. You just drag and drop from this library.

You can import a picture of your diagram into another document in a desktop or online application. Diagrams can be stored online and can also be exported in JPEG, SVG, and PNG formats.

The following types of diagrams are supported:

1. Flow Chart
2. UML Diagrams (I tried to write a sequence diagram; was kind of painful ! )
3. User Interface Diagrams
4. Floorplan
5. Basic Shapes

Gliffy for Flowcharts

Gliffy has all the ingredients of a good flowcharting software. It has collapsable palettes, dynamic object properties like Visio, Symbols with drop shadows and stencils with basic shapes. Here's a screenshot of Gliffy Flowchart Editor inside Firefox.

Share and Collaborate

By specifying e-mail addresses, a user can add collaborators to their diagram. Collaboration enables others to see and edit your work by simply entering their email address.

You can also publish your diagrams as images or URL and embedded your diagrams as dynamic content within your blog or website.

I used Gliffy to create a fairly long flowchart. These are the issues I faced with it -

1) Text does not auto-fit in a decision box.If the text was on the edges of the box, pressing enter after you are finished typing the text, seems to push it further out.
2) My flowchart went off the page, and I wanted to add some extra steps in the flowchart towards to the start, so in essence wanted to move the rest of the flowchart down the pages. Trying to achieve this was a nightmare, the scroll does not work when you try to select and drag with the mouse. The only way to do it was to select all and then try and use the 'down arrow' key to move it down. Even this was carried out at a snail's pace, and in the end I just decided it might be quicker to redo it and copy the boxes I needed.

There are other bits and pieces with the tool, that I have made it not very easy to use to create flowcharts that are long and might need changing.

-Darps
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Old 11-11-2009

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Gliffy Online Diagram Editor

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