Needs a copy editor. “Periodically” is spelled two different ways, both wrong.
Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs
71–80 of 83 posts
Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I'd love to be able to export to a vector format - something I can load into another diagram tool. Not sure of the Visio format is open and documented, but being able to export to Visio would set my mind completely at ease. Aside from that, I'd echo what a couple of others here have said about having a desktop app version, which would work with local, rather than cloud storage - I generally prefer to have full contro…
The visio format is basically zipped xml, and its extensively documented by Microsoft.
Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs
#73What on earth do diagrams have to do with trust in docs? Docs that are useful, accurate, and up to date would increase trust.
Eventually your docs will be updated and noone will be around to update the included diagrams. And when the users (the developers!) notice the discrepancy, trust will decrease.
Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs
#74I tend to use .drawio.png extension and then collaborate inside the repo in real-time using vscode live share ( https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/services/live-share/ ) and the drawio extension together ( https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=hediet.v... ) Then, in markdown/readmes use . It will render locally, and in GitHub, and also if you use remark or something l…
Author of the drawio extension here, nice to see you using it! I can highly recommend using the *.drawio.svg extension though! Svgs also work in Github readmes and perform much better overall. They also work much better over liveshare!
Wow, thanks for the tip!
Love the extension, great work
Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs
#75Needs a copy editor. “Periodically” is spelled two different ways, both wrong.
Thanks for taking the voluntary role ;)
Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs
#76I've always felt that these type of tools shouldn't have a traditional home page with sign up, sign in, etc. If you go to Excalidraw's website, it immediately launches the application for you to start using it. If you need extra features, only then you go to a page that provides details, pricing, etc. This is a beautiful pattern that makes these type of tools a daily habit for people to use. I don't want to create an…
I get that, but they want to collect your email to improve marketing. If the product is strong enough it may not matter. Practically speaking, I think getting user signup info is pretty important.
I don't get it. Do marketing mails ever sell anything? Or changing the name of the company or any of those other transparent manipulations? It's insulting.
The product should wow the user and sell itself and then the user will come asking to pay for more features. I've bought many products this way.
There's no way I'm signing up for these things.
Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs
#77Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs
#78The Icepanel.io seems like an excellent start to an interesting project. But seems very early/alpha.
Key features - be able to distinguish between connections flowing into a hub (Outlines); have bi-directional flows to illustrate different data exchanges; colours; lack of due to huge Pro sign up ad in Diagrams view are all hinderances.
Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs
#79I 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…
Huh - if you work in this domain - how is Visio very expensive? It's a few hundred dollars for things that save you tens and hundreds of work. It also has an unbelievably rich extensibility model - almost too complex.
The bigger issue is a) it doesn't do many of the things that we as architecture and design work requires - declarative rules (Component A --> connects to --> Component B) - enforce this rule without my having to worry about arrow drawing b) Version management c) Visio's default of a printed page as Canvas is incredibly cumbersome - we want big canvases in which we can zoom in / out liberally for large diagrams (hundreds of components).
It's more a question that it's not really an architecture tool for large systems. It's a general purpose tool that we've attempted to manipulate. So it doesn't work well for in-depth uses.
Re: Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What size of company and what industry do you work in out of interest?
I work as an architect for a consulting and off-shoring megacorp. I mainly work for European clients in the oil and gas sector, but recently have worked in finance too. I find Visio (or any visual diagram tool) useful for hacking together a diagram collaboratively.
I also have a side business (me and a co-founder), and I'm planning on making the plunge and going full-time on it in the next few months - there too I've used Visio, because it's what I'm used to, and I get a license with our Microsoft Action Pack subscription. Here though, I'd probably prefer to move to a declarative model, like PlantUML (I only recently found out it works with icon sets, so can do things like nice architecture diagrams too).