Digramly - build diagrams online with great ease for free

Cute. Spent a bit of time trying to figure out how to get an arrow: It's not obvious that you need to drag to get an arrow object, because if you just click without dragging, all the other objects will create a new instance at top left. I started out assuming that the UI would be select the object, then click to make a new instance where you wanted it. So, once an object appeared, I thought the intended UI was, click to get object, move it to where you wanted. I think you need to either not create a new object unless the user does drag, so they understand that something more is required (which is how visio seems to do it) or make 'new instance at top left' work for all objects.

This is the easiest and best way I've ever found to draw electrical circuits. Oh my god. So much components. I'm shaking in happiness for all the time I won't have to waste trying to fight inkscape & friends. (Not even mentioning latex packages to do this)

It would be nice to have "gist" like functionality. Users could embed the diagrams to their blogs, others could fork their own copies.

This tool badly needs to generate a URL along that top that when shared loads the diagram I just created...

Will give this a go next time. I have been using Lucidchart http://www.lucidchart.com/ which is one of the better diagramming tools I've tried.

For future readers: Mentioned diagramming programs/apps

http://www.diagram.ly (based on mxGraph, a javascript lib)

http://www.lucidchart.com/

http://www.gliffy.com/ (requires flash)

https://www.circuitlab.com/

http://www.umlet.com/ (download)

http://www.flowchart.com

http://docs.google.com (drawings not diagrams)

gojs.net (still in private alpha)

I'd add that I've tried:

http://www.lovelycharts.com

http://www.cacoo.com (flash)

This is one of the nicest browser-based drawing tools I've seen. While I can't see it replacing Inkscape for most of my work, the ability to edit the mxGraph markup is super cool, along with the SVG export option.

I like this! I tried to bookmark it with Cmd+D, and noticed you trapped that keyboard event for the duplicate function. It might be better to use shift instead of meta to avoid colliding with copy, paste, etc.

I am actually looking for a decent UML editor. So I create a class, click it, expecting to get at the very least a couple of text areas labeled "Methods" and "Fields." Instead, I get a WYSIWYG editor that looks like it came out of the early 2000's. My immediate reaction was to jump back and shout "DAAAAAA!" (I am not joking about that.)

Now, obviously I don't know exactly what your target audience for this is. But in general, my experience is that if you provide a WYSIWYG editor, the users will do horrible, horrible things to your content. They are usually prone to glitching out in addition. And more specifically, for editing UML, a WYSIWYG editor is just about worthless - it provides no structure to the data, and it makes it incredibly easy to bork up the structure of the class. (Also, the editor doesn't really mesh with your site's design very well.)

So, my advice would be to provide a bit more structure to the content of individual diagram elements (at the very least, separate text boxes for Name, Methods, and Fields in a UML class), and find a less obtrusive WYSIWYG editor if you decide to continue going down that route.

I have to say that this is the easiest diagramming tool I have ever used. I am impressed!

Interesting. There's no Facebook 'like' button, but there are Google Plus and Twitter social networking widgets. Is this some kind of a transparent statement or a rebellious move against Facebook as a non technical target audience? ;]

The service is called 'Diagramly' not 'Digramly'

Neat and very easy to use. This tool made me hate diagrams a bit less ;)

Obviously this is a missing component in Google Docs (and even done in the same spirit). Good chance Google will acquire this... or build their own.

this is pretty sweet.

a feature that i have yet to see anywhere (which would be trivial to add, btw), is labeling the actual connection endoints, like with IP or MAC addresses in network diagrams.

also something that probably needs to be implemented in the mxGraph lib is obstacle avoidance during connection routing, so that routes don't run into or under other objects, this is non-trivial.

bonus would be allowing a connection re-route only to specific "alternate" endpoints or ones that match some definable ruleset when a block is moved around on the diagram.

A few things that would make me use this:

- Shapes for user interface widgets (windows, buttons, text fields, etc.) for desktop and mobile

- A way to easily share my diagrams via a url (could be as easy as generating a url in the form of http://www.diagram.ly/?diagram=[hash of the xml])

- Direct uploading of exported images to a image sharing website (e.g. imgur). Although you might be able to generate a little revenue by hosting them yourself and serving them up alongside an ad?

Amazing tool! Well done :) Which company is behind this?

Very very nice.

One observation, on the export it looked like it was trimming the result and not including the entire lines. I had two circle shapes, one over the other and at export it clipped the top of the top shape, and bottom from bottom. Almost like the math is calculating from the center of the line shape and forgot to account for the line thickness when calculating export cropping.

Thanks for making this tool.

That is great, well done! I'll be using this a fair bit!

A thing that annoyed me, when I double clicked an object to type text it, it seemed to type the text at the top, rather than the middle of the object. Once I was done editing, it popped to the middle. Not a big deal, but the only negative thing I could find!

Hmm... I might be able to us this for doing programming structure charts. I've unfortunately yet to find a program or app that has all the things I want with WYSWYG, much less groups them, but this has most of them.

Would love the ability to upload my own vectors for use, and to create a custom group of vectors.

Nice work.. I didn't expect it to be so responsive. Almost feels like using a desktop application.

Impressive! I especially like the image search and how it jumps right into the app without any preliminaries like a signup page or a plea for cash.

..And it exports in almost every format that matters. I'll definitely be using this next time I need to put a diagram together.

I love diagram.ly. I use it all the time to create sitemaps and flow diagrams. My only complaint is that exporting diagrams doesnt always product the result you wanted the first time, but it usually just takes some setting tweaks to get it right.

Awesome!

May lack some sharing functionality but some really neat objects available and really easy to user.

Very nicely done. I like how the menu work. Especially how the Open and Save mapped to browser's upload and download. Excellent work!

This is very cool. But then I look at the maker of the Diagram Library and the cost per license is $7,900 dollars ???

Talk about expensive libraries.

Very timely, since I'm getting ready to plan out a major project. This is going to be prominently bookmarked. Thanks!

I'm missing a simple UML dependency arrow, like the "uses" but without the text (looks cleaner IMHO).

Does anyone know of a library that you could use as a basis to build similar functionality?

nice, i've been using Flowchart.com which gives me collaboration.

VERY nice... will try and use that next time, well done!

It is very impressive that it works flawlessly in IE7.

I'm impressed it works well on an IPad - good job!

nice, i've been using Flowchart.com which offers real time collaboration too!

It's awesome!! But why is it free? Seems like this is a pretty slick product that you could be making money off.

Are you hoping to be bought? Are you just trying to help people out? Are you already rich?

As I said, it's awesome, and I'm going to use it. But I just want to understand the motivation!