Gliffy Review

Some time ago I was moaning that I lack a web alternative for Visio. I was directed to Gliffy. I have to admit the way Gliffy authors have chosen is the one, which I believe is right. They’ve started small and they’re growing their product (little) step by (little) step.

Beta

First of all Gliffy is still in beta. I think that became some kind of standard in web applications. Well, we still have GMail in beta. How long has it been by now? It’s third year already. Coming back to the subject, I haven’t found major issues within basic functions of Gliffy. There are some in collaboration function, but I’ll share them later on. For a beta version I’d say it is fine.

Basic Functionality

Basic functionality is um… basic. There are limited set of predefined charts: flow chart, UML diagram, network diagram, user interface design and floor plan. If you try to make a bit more advanced diagram you’ll lack a lot of shapes. There are two functions to help you here: you can search the internet to find needed picture or you can upload it from your hard drive. I recommend the latter because results returned from the web search are rather irrelevant. With the help of your own pictures you can create quite appealing charts, although it requires more effort than using standard shapes.

Advanced Functionality

Like I’ve mentioned on the beginning Gliffy started small so you won’t find many advanced features. There are two however which are worth mentioning.

• History. Version history is stored on Gliffy servers and you have an easy access to them.

• Collaboration. The application is web-based so collaboration is a natural idea and fairly easy to develop. Charts are stored on Gliffy’s servers, users log in with their e-mails, chart owner sets permissions for other users, etc. Not a rocket science, right? Well, not a rocket science unless you want to deal with on-line changes displayed instantly and conflicts with saving a file on the server from multiple points. For now Gliffy covers only the easier part of the job and needs some improvements even there. After simultaneous file save from two consoles I’ve lost one of historical versions. I’ve faced some problems with accessing the shared file from account which was invited to participate (haven’t got the file on the list of my files). With this kind of issues with basic collaboration functionality I think we’ll wait some time for advanced features like seeing others’ changes instantly.

Look and Feel

One thing is how Gliffy itself looks and while it isn’t polished it’s OK. Workspace is designed to look like Visio so you don’t need to read help to know how to start. However I’d change graphic design of Gliffy. I don’t know why but it makes me feel like it wasn’t a professional tool.
Another thing is look and feel of charts produced by the application. I think the best comment would be two diagrams one from Gliffy and another from Visio.

Yes, you’re right. The ugly one is from Gliffy.

Usability

And for the end my favorite: usability. The user interface is too sensitive for mouse moves. You’ll often end up moving a shape instead of selecting it. Multiple undo works fine but where’s the heck redo? Setting connectors works almost the same as in Visio. And believe me, it isn’t a compliment. It’s not better or worse – it’s just crappy in a bit different way. Is that so hard to make it work intuitively? Group function doesn’t group all the selected controls – it has some problems with text labels. I think this is the area where on one hand Gliffy can rock because Visio doesn’t set the record very high, but on the other it would be a challenge for them, because a good web user interface is always harder to craft than it is in a classic client application. However the path Gliffy has chosen – writing the whole thing in flash – allows making it. I keep my finger crossed then.

To summarize, I think that for now Gliffy is on the good path but still far from their destination. They definitely chose the better option than Projity with Project-ON-Demand and don’t try to do everything Visio does. For now, the main issue is that I wouldn’t show standard Gliffy diagram to my customer. It just look like it was crafted by country artist, not like it was generated by professional chart tool. With your own uploaded graphics you can make it better, but then you’d have all shapes in one group and it would be much harder to work with Gliffy. On the plus side, the application has two main strengths: price (it’s free) and collaboration (alas some improvements are essential here). I’d consider Gliffy as a tool if I needed to create diagrams for internal use only. Unfortunately mixed mode with some Gliffy charts and some Visio diagrams isn’t an option here because there’s no import/export feature. I can guess why (it would by very difficult) but, from the user’s perspective, who cares?

Tagged as: gliffy, project management, project management software, review, software design