Draw.io: Online Diagramming Website • Hacker News Board

Re: Draw.io: Online Diagramming Website

#171

Post by 10000100001010 » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 2:13 AM UTC

davidjgraph wrote: post #134

thayne wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This was a couple of years ago, so things may have changed since. Yes, Lucidchart's performance has improved in the past couple years. And we now have resources dedicated to improving performance. > From that perspective, these isn't much difference between any of these programs, so there's just no reason to use a paid product. That's fair. I think Lucidchart's main advantage is more advanced functionality. And if…

You're allowed to describe that advanced functionality, I'm pretty curious, myself.

Lucidchart is tiring complete :) we have a lot of data and automation features, integrations, text based diagramming, advanced shape libraries, dynamic shaped etc. Discoveravility of all the features can be lacking though because there is so much stuff. I've worked on the product for years and I still learn about new features all the time.

Re: Draw.io: Online Diagramming Website

#172

Post by graphviz » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 2:17 AM UTC

steve-s wrote: post #159

CivBase wrote: post #157

Anyone have recommendations for a simple text-based flowchart specification format? Something that a human can read and easily understand in plaintext, but can also be rendered as a graphic? The current solutions we have at my work are extremely difficult to use with VCS. I've looked at Mermaid [0], but it is pretty limiting in its feature set. I typically use draw.io/mxGraph [1] when I'm making diagrams and flowchar…

GraphViz?

What?

Re: Draw.io: Online Diagramming Website

#173

Post by yug_blop » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 2:44 AM UTC

I can personally recommend precursor:

https://precursorapp.com

Re: Draw.io: Online Diagramming Website

#174

Post by rajesh-s » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 3:14 AM UTC

Long time draw.io user here. A couple of weeks back [brainio](https://brainio.com/#/) was posted on HN. Though it's still in beta, it works really well and I like the concept of going from Markdown to Mindmap and vice-versa.

Drawio is also trying to implement this through PlantUML but it's not fully functional yet with only some constrained types on PlantUML support.

Re: Draw.io: Online Diagramming Website

#175

Post by jjice » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 3:15 AM UTC

I was just using this today for an ER diagram for class with a group. Working on a single document as a group works well, which has come up quite a few times in my time at university. Draw.io offers everything I need (which isn't very much) without being overly complicated.

Re: Draw.io: Online Diagramming Website

#176

Post by ouid » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 4:48 AM UTC

beernutz wrote: post #114

ouid wrote: post #72

When trying to create a new drawing, if I select the "not in my root folder" option, it a) tries to log me in despite my already being logged in, and b) fails anyway.

I see the same issue. I can save to root folder only in google drive. Also i am unable to open a file in google drive as it has the same "log in" dialog. https://www.screencast.com/t/g4wnSWLDtOLk Clicking the "Sign in" button closes the dialog and reopens it. It does this cycle twice, then shows this error pane: https://www.screencast.com/t/qmUhxSuU2T

exactly that.

Re: Draw.io: Online Diagramming Website

#177

Post by janee » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 5:08 AM UTC

hanniabu wrote: post #85

flanbiscuit wrote: post #29

> draw.io is a client-side, static web application. There is no user authenication or data storage concept in this repo. The online version stores data in mainstream cloud storage options, currently Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Github, Gitlab or Trello. I love this about Draw.io. This is how I want to build my applications. I don't want to deal with storing any user data and rather let them handle it how they see…

> mainstream cloud storage options, currently Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Github, Gitlab or Trello. Anybody know of a library of service (preferably open source) that offers an easy API to interact with all these in such a way?

Maybe something like https://kloudless.com/ haven't used them though

Only other option I could find is https://github.com/rclone/rclone but it's a commandline tool

Re: Draw.io: Online Diagramming Website

#178

Post by TimTheTinker » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 5:25 AM UTC

hatmatrix wrote: post #170

Gravityloss wrote: post #64

I've tried drawing diagrams with these tools and it seems so much harder for quick drafting than just using pen and paper and also a lot of work to get anything even remotely good looking (like aligning things or making boxes of the same size, ie performing mass operations). I would like to use a tool where I first describe the relations in text/code and the layouting and formatting is done separately, and formatting…

I have been using yed for a while now - I don't think it exports to PDF well (not all elements are editable) BUT it is hierarchical and has some tools for automatically laying out your elements. Overall I have found it to be great for flowcharts and diagramming (atrocious was of default colors aside...) - I liked it more than draw.io when I compared them several years ago. You can download and use yed for free - I th…

I'm a long-time yEd user. I think its secret sauce is the incredible time and effort its creators put into its automatic layout algorithms. I have yet to see anything else that matches it in that respect.

In particular, yEd is what I would call critical for quickly generating easily readable dependency diagrams with more than, say, 50 elements. The heirarchical layout supports octilinear edge routing (like subway diagrams), which makes resulting layouts readable even with hundreds or thousands of elements. Also, I have printed out large yEd dependency diagrams on a plotter -- so if you can "print to PDF" (like on a Mac or a recent Windows version), generating a PDF should be simple.

I just counted the number of options available on the "hierarchical" layout. This isn't a competition, but it does give you an idea of how thoroughly their developers built it: there are 51 configurable options. And in addition to "heirarchical", there are 19 other automatic layout types available, each with their own options.

Additionally, yEd's native file format is graphml, which is an open standard and can be generated programmatically.

Re: Draw.io: Online Diagramming Website

#179

Post by austhrow743 » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 8:00 AM UTC

newprint wrote: post #27

Ok, just a note to everyone ! It is online service and your diagrams are stored in the "cloud" and you have zero control over it. Please, do not post your company's secret in form of diagrams. Recently, we caught one of the contractors using Draw.io to make diagrams of brand new systems that we are designing(we are fortune 40 company). System is expensive, very sensitive.

Contractor could have saved diagrams generated to the cloud using any tool. Not sure what makes Draw.io worth calling out in that regard.

Re: Draw.io: Online Diagramming Website

#180

Post by simas89 » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 8:11 AM UTC

andrei_says_ wrote: post #156

blakeburch wrote: post #137

If you're looking for a fantastic diagramming site, I would recommend checking out [Whimsical]( https://whimsical.com/ ). I've tried out a lot of solutions over the years (draw.io, LucidChart,Gliffy, etc.). Whimsical is the first that really nails the UI/UX. You spend less time fighting the system to make something that looks great and more time just building out your diagram. I'm not associated with the product at a…

Love the interface and the fact that it's written in Clojure but it's worth mentioning Whimsical is $10/month vs. draw.io being free forever, and the Whimsical limited intro version is crippled in some quite annoying ways.

Just checked it out - it's incredibly stringent. It doesn't adjust your "free board" limit even if you delete a board. Create a board, delete it just to try out the interface? One of your free boards is gone forever.

Love the interface, hate the free plan.