posted13/07/10
What a terrific month its been for us here at Creately! First, we launched the
Creately for FogBugz plugin, and now we bring you a brand new release with a host of new capabilities and bug fixes.
This week’s release at a glance!
1) Better Diagram Manager
Multi-Select and new Keyboard Shortcuts
We’ve made it possible for you to multi-select all the diagrams in your Creately Projects. You can now select multiple diagrams to either open or delete them, saving you loads of time while working in Creately. To make it easier, we’ve introduced a couple of useful keyboard shortcuts - To select all the diagrams in a project, simply click Ctrl + A or hit click F2 to rename a diagram/document from the Document Manager window.
Check out the new Sort and Filter options!
Do you spend a whole lot of your time locating the diagrams in your Creately Projects? Click on the drop down menu on the Sort and Filter options to locate your diagrams in your Projects. With the improved filter options you can locate your diagrams in just minutes.
And don’t miss out on the new Detailed List view!
The Document manager now also comes with a new Detailed List view along with the standard Tile view of your Creately diagrams. The Detailed view displays thumbnails along with all the relevant details of all your project diagrams.
2) The Diagram Editor
Re-sizable canvas to suit all your diagramming needs!
Click on the Page Properties tab, and check out the new Landscape page sizes which are now available!
Larger canvas for bigger diagrams!
We’ve been getting many requests to increase the maximum canvas size beyond 2500px. In this release we’ve worked hard to improve this and now you can create diagrams of up to 8000px per side. Great for those complex flowcharts and class diagrams.
3) Pretty shapes and connectors!
All your abstract shapes come with a default fill! We’ve decided to lose the plain boring white fills in our abstract shapes, and now they’re all with pretty gradient fills. We’ve not stopped with there, we’ve also tuned the Flowchart object connection points for beautiful looking flowcharts; and created thinner outlines on all the User Interface objects to give it a more uniform look.
We’ve introduced a faster JPEG encoder to make exporting JPEG significantly faster, along with better error management and recovery on Network and Session issues all to keep our valuable users happy!
posted19/06/10
Here at Cinergix, we are committed to delivering Creately to all of you who have the burning need to put that great idea into a nice picture. Over time we have heard and felt the love from everyone who’s been using Creately. Our desire to reach out to you gave birth to the idea of a Creately Plugin - an architecture that would allow us to integrate Creately to different platforms so you can continue to use Creately right within the platforms you work in every single day. And Creately for FogBugz is just the first in many more to come.
The Approach
Taking the current version of Creately that was built as a SAAS service and turning it into a portable component that works on any platform was quite a lot of fun and somewhat challenging. When we designed the Creately Plugin we had to make sure it could be easily reused and quickly integrated into any platform out there. This way Creately can be made available on your favorite wikis, blogs, case management and productivity tools in the near future with minimal rework.
Creately SWF & Wrapper
Basically, there are two parts to converting an online application like Creately to support a plugin infrastrusture. The first is the the actual application, Creately, that can be compiled in 2 different modes. The Online SWF Mode for SAAS delivery and the Plugin SWF Mode for integrating into plugin platforms.
The second component, the Plugin Wrapper, is responsible for integrating the application into the platform that hosts the plugin. This Plugin Wrapper needs to be built specifically for the platform that it is hosted on, using the platform’s API’s. Platforms like FogBugz have detailed documentation on how a plugin can be built for it. In the case of FogBugz, we also had the folks at FogCreek helping us get the best diagramming plugin out to you guys. Thanks, we couldn’t have done it without you guys.
Deconstructing the Application
So we started with the most important component, the Creately SWF, the flex code that runs in the Flash Player in your browser. We worked in a layer of separation to enable us to compile the Creately SWF to run in different modes. Based on the mode, the Creately front end functionality and the backend interaction would work completely differently. The mode is specified in a configuration file that is used when compiling Creately.
The Online Mode SWF uses Remote Objects to connect and interact with the Creately backend services (Jupiter Service). The Plugin Mode SWF would expect a set of http endpoints to be available for it to communicate, to send and receive the required data. The Plugin Wrapper would expose these endpoints required by the Plugin Mode SWF and are configured in the configuration file.
This way by simply switching the configuration file and compiling, the Creately swf can be used to either generate Creately to run as a SaaS service or as a FogBugz plugin or a plugin for a completely new platform. This method not only enables us to easily build Creately plugins for more platforms but also lets us deliver all the cool new features we build into Creately to all distributions of Creately. Its great to be able to do this without ever splitting our code base.
More Ideas!
You think thats cool? Well then you are going to like what I have to say next. This very approach will enable us to build a desktop version of Creately for you in the future. 
How about that?
Tell us what you think and how much you like the idea of Creately on your desktop. Also, if there’s another platform out there you’d love to see Creately on drop leave us a note here.
@Hiraash
posted16/06/10
Last week the Flash Player team at Adobe released version 10.1. While its a small dot version number change, it is a monumental release in terms of its content and significance to what is happening in the browser market today.
Faster Creately
We’re very excited about the new version. With Flash 10.1, Creately now runs blazingly fast on the Mac (and on PC’s), is overall delivers a more stable and reliable experience. Adobe has thankfully fixed a number of issues that have plagued our loyal customers since the last version, including issues with image uploading on the Mac.
To achieve this performance improvements, Flash 10.1 supports hardware acceleration of 2D and 3D graphics, manages memory more efficiently especially in tabbed browsing situations and includes a number of core improvements to the run-time to reduce execution time.
Another very exciting new feature for us at Creately is Flash Player’s new Multi-Touch support API’s. The team can’t wait to have a go at this in the near future!
The Future of Flash
This release of the Flash Player comes at a time when there has been much hostility against Flash. In light of the the Apple vs. Adobe debate, we feel this release put Adobe in a good place to start answering its critics. We hope they will continue aggressively improving its product capabilities rather than investing in meaningless ad campaigns in an attempt to reclaim Flash’s position as a powerful cross-browser platform.
Of course, the elephant in the room when discussing Flash is HTML5. For us as application developers, the competition between the technologies is great news. And no, they won’t kill each other off, it’s complimentary.
Historically, Flash has enabled us to push the envelope on what’s been possible in the browser well before the browser delivered. Now thankfully, with the focus on HTML5 and the browser wars of the 21st century back in full force, we are loving the amount of standards adoptions, evolution, and aggressive development that is helping the browser itself become a very powerful run-time to build on.
For Creately this means there are more things we’ll be able to do, to deliver awesome user experiences to our customers. It does not matter whether it’s delivered in Flash or HTML - the user only care that the experience is seamless, secure and productive.
We believe many companies including Adobe, Google, Mozilla, Microsoft (yes) get this. Only a few geeks care whats under the hood. End users only care that their job gets done. I’m surprised our friends at Cupertino who build ‘magical’ devices don’t get it.
posted12/06/10
Today, we’re happy to announce the release of Creately for FogBugz, a brand new plugin for everyone’s favourite software project management and bug-tracking system, FogBugz from FogCreek Software.
Creately for FogBugz lets everyone on your project team communicate clearly by easily creating and including diagrams in FogBugz. With full integration into the FogBugz interface, you can easily add Use Cases, Wireframes, Flowcharts, UML or any other diagrams to FogBugz cases and wiki pages.
Squash’Em Bugs
Bugs fixing will go a lot smoother when you can clearly explain the issues to developers. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so get everyone on the same page by adding annotated wireframes, or updated Use Cases to every FogBugz case. Anyone working on the case can edit and and modify diagrams as the case or feature is worked on.
Up-to-date Documentation
The ability to quickly add diagrams directly within Wiki pages will make documenting your software projects a lot less of a chore. No more attaching external Visio files, and no more expensive desktop-based software. With Creately for FogBugz, the whole team can update project documentation right within the browser, saving time and more importantly helping keep your specifications up-to-date.
Get it now!
Creately for FogBugz plugin is available for installation on your own Fogbugz server starting from $85/user with bulk discounts available for larger teams. Currently we only support Fogbugz on the Windows platform, but a Linux and hosted version for FogBugz OnDemand will be announced shortly.
Download Free 14-day trial
Installation Help
Give yourself the advantage of Creately for Fogbugz by purchasing your license right now or if your not quite ready you can also download the free 14-day trial.
posted29/05/10
Today, we’re excited to announce Creately’s improved Import/Export capability made possible with our new Creately Document Markup Language (.cdml) and brand new Team Plans with great discounts for larger Teams. Lets jump straight into it.
Save your Diagrams Locally
First off, the new Import/Export capability. Team and Pro users can now backup all your Creately diagrams locally on your desktop by simply exporting a Creately Document Markup Language format file (*.cdml). These exported files can easily be imported back into Creately maintaining all embedded images and links at full-resolution.
We’ve significantly upgraded our upload and download infrastructure, so now you’ll be able to download CDML, PDF, PNG and JPEGs as well as import your own graphics into Creately at a blistering speed. This is great for all those mockups and presentations that need custom graphics. We know you’ll love this.
We’re most excited about the possibilities the new CDML format will present for our users and developers, so over the next few weeks , Hiraash will be putting up some ideas and examples of what you can do with our new diagram document format. Go ahead, export an image and open the CDML file with any text editor for a sneak peek.
Bulk User Plans!
After we announced our Team plans and Creately for Google Apps, we’ve been inunadated with requests from larger Teams looking to adopt Creately in their pursuit for more efficient project collaboration. We’ve heard you and we’re happy to announce fantastic bulk discounts for larger Teams.
With the new prices, you’ll pay $8/month each for the first 5 users. If you have a larger team of say 12 users, you’ll simply pay $8 for the first 5 users, then $6 for the next 5 and finally $5 for the last 2 users. So a 12 user team will be charged $80 / month ($40 + $30 + $10). That’s a 17% savings, straight off the bat.
Check out our plans page for more details. If you need more than a 100 users on Creately - call us we’re here to help.
These new discounts will make adopting Creately across your Google Apps domain excellent value for money. As always, we’ve got great discounts for Educators, Colleges and do-gooders - just reach out to us.
What to Expect
Over the coming weeks - expect some exciting new announcements that will Creately the best visual collaboration and diagramming application for software, design and support teams, including a new plugin for FogBugz and improvements in our software diagramming capability. Until then happy diagramming.
@Creately Team
