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Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

icepanel.io

1–10 of 83 posts

Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

#4

"Error: could not handle the request" looks like HN hug of death did its job.

I've had really bad experiences trying to serve web workloads from lambda or cloud functions type services. The ramp up period to scale for a sudden influx of traffic is ridiculously slow. basically it can't handle a thundering herd at all unless you pre-provision enough concurrency which is incredibly expensive.

I'm sure these kinds of services have good use cases for back office async tasks and things like that, but for web workloads it doesn't really work.

Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

#6
post #4

"Error: could not handle the request" looks like HN hug of death did its job.

I've had really bad experiences trying to serve web workloads from lambda or cloud functions type services. The ramp up period to scale for a sudden influx of traffic is ridiculously slow. basically it can't handle a thundering herd at all unless you pre-provision enough concurrency which is incredibly expensive. I'm sure these kinds of services have good use cases for back office async tasks and things like that, bu…

We're only using cloud functions for the initial redirect for some links, looks like we're hitting some kind of quota limit in our cloud environment. Should be fixed now.

Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

#7
I usually use Visio for diagrams like this. It's a very powerful tool, but it's expensive, and really fiddly to use such that everything is aligned and sized the way I want - I invariably spend far too long adjusting size and position.

Something like this could be really useful, and I'm keen to give it a try!

If the founder is here, a question: what formats can you export diagrams in? My biggest fears in using something like this would be lock-in, or it shutting down and losing everything.

Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

#8
post #7

I usually use Visio for diagrams like this. It's a very powerful tool, but it's expensive, and really fiddly to use such that everything is aligned and sized the way I want - I invariably spend far too long adjusting size and position. Something like this could be really useful, and I'm keen to give it a try! If the founder is here, a question: what formats can you export diagrams in? My biggest fears in using someth…

Hey Gordon,

It'd be great to hear your thoughts/feedback on the tool. Please feel free to reach out to us.

In terms your comment about lock-in I understand your fear and I think a lot of companies will share this. We currently offer PDF/PNG export however due to the interactive nature of our diagrams we're looking into how we can provide an interactive export. An IcePanel file is also an idea we're looking into. We'd love to work with you if you have any specific ideas in this area.

Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

#9
post #8
post #7

I usually use Visio for diagrams like this. It's a very powerful tool, but it's expensive, and really fiddly to use such that everything is aligned and sized the way I want - I invariably spend far too long adjusting size and position. Something like this could be really useful, and I'm keen to give it a try! If the founder is here, a question: what formats can you export diagrams in? My biggest fears in using someth…

Hey Gordon, It'd be great to hear your thoughts/feedback on the tool. Please feel free to reach out to us. In terms your comment about lock-in I understand your fear and I think a lot of companies will share this. We currently offer PDF/PNG export however due to the interactive nature of our diagrams we're looking into how we can provide an interactive export. An IcePanel file is also an idea we're looking into. We'd…

A native app would also allow you to access different market segments. E.g., I work with a fair amount of DOD-controlled information, and storing it in a cloud is not an option. I'd be all over an app like this that allowed us to use local storage.

Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

#10
A question I always have for diagramming software is how it handles refactoring. This is often the most frustrating part of every tool. How does IcePanel improve this experience? Group selection and dragging to hopefully have enough room for something new is not workable in complex diagrams.
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