Category Archives for : Beta

It’s just 5 days into Beta and I would say that things are looking great! While I think that the process of ironing out various bugs are being done quite effectively, it would make sense to highlight the many advantages

The April Release of Creately is coming

19 April 2009

Pink PantherWith the recent release of the new Pink Panther movie here in Australia we’ve started using code names for each of our Creately releases. It’s pure coincidence that we named this first release on the greatest cartoon panther ever!

The next version of Creately isn’t going to be pink but it is going to be just as great.

Here at the Creately R&D Labs we’ve been hard at work adding a range of new features to the Creately framework and improving the current KObject sets. Its taken a lot of hard work but the release is now being finalised and will be ready in the coming week.

We’re a Customer-Driven startup, and are committed to letting our users guide us in developing a better product. We’re so exciting about this release because for the first time we got to introduce features that real users have asked for. Thank you for all the feedback, star ratings and suggestions you’ve given us.

‘Nuff said – Here’s what’s headed your way this week.

  • Brand New Toolbar – A sleek new toolbar that’ll give you more space for your drawing canvas.
  • 1-click styling – KObjects can now be styled with beautiful backgrounds, borders and gradients at the click of a button. Beauty with ease.
  • More Sharing Goodness – We heard you loud and clear. You’ll be able to publish your diagrams on a search engine friendly public URL with just 1-Click. Now clients and teammates can view and comment on your work without a login.
  • Add your own images – Everyone wants to add their own images to their designs so we bring you the 1-Click image upload button.
  • Comment, Share and Smarts – Now leave comments, share your work and configure KObjects in individual tabbed windows.
  • Connectors – Connectors have been rewritten and are quicker and easier. We’ve got rid of those niggly issues and would love to hear your thoughts on this.
  • Lines – Ever needed to draw free form lines that are not connectors? Now you can!
  • Beautiful Curves – We’ve got beautiful new curved connectors and lines. Sexy!
  • PDF Anyone? – Yes, now export your diagrams in Adobe PDF format for that professional finish as well as JPEG and PNG.
  • Right-Click Menu – You asked for it so R&D got cracking on this problem to bring you a right click context menu. Tell us what you’d like in the right-click menu on our Support site.
  • Powerful New KObjects – Creately’s getting smarter. More on this in a later post.
  • Profile Management – View and update your Creately profile directly in the Creately application.
  • Improved Star Rating Feedback Form – Brand new Ajax window to help make it easier for you to share your feedback.

This is just a quick teaser. We’ll give you a full run down when we release the next instalment of Creately this week. We’d love to hear your thoughts so swing by our Community Support Site to request a feature or provide us with your ideas.

@nick_foster

Image courtesy: www.maquilon.com
New Release and Nick gets married

28 January 2009

Yesterday, after a busy couple of weeks we pushed out a new version of Creately to our private beta users. Just in time so the team can take a well deserved break, as Nick gets married on Thursday. We’re really happy for Nick and Nadisha, and you’ll hear all about it next week after the festivities are over. But for now we want to share some exciting new additions and fixes we’ve introduced in this release.

We’ve got some great feedback from our testers and we really appreciate the time you folk have taken to help us refine Creately. And I want to stress how we want to continue to drive adoption of support.creately.com as the focus of our communications with our new users.

Here’s a quick list of changes we’re introduced.

  • A new web based Login that’s integrated into the Creately.com site. We hope you like this.
  • Improved pop-up window management. This was getting to be a problem with users using different browsers, but we’ve smoothed this out for a better user experience. Drop us a note if you still find this to be a problem.
  • The old data window has been replaced with a less cluttered data/property view area on right side of the application. Now, instead of having to manage multiple data view windows in your workspace, Creately automatically updates the data view area with all the properties of the selected KObject. You can still get to the old data window if you need by clicking on the contextual KObject menu.
  • A properly optimized and documented deployment architecture for Creately on Amazon Web Services infrastructure. This will hopefully help us save some money as we expand our user base over the next month.
  • Tons of bug fixes that will now make your design and drawing tasks smoother with Creately.

Interested to give it a go? Sign up for our beta now.