I've used it as a lightweight alternative to LucidChart and was impressed. Pretty cool to be able to just download it as html, in addition to as an image.
Exactly how I got into it. At university, realized that despite buying some office pack with a laptop, there was no visio contained. Began with draw.io and never looked back.
I used the javascript and java versions of mxGraph (jgraphx) in several projects. Very powerful libraries with many features and many possibilities for customization. Documentation sucked, though.
I use Draw.io for work all the time. It's far less clunky than Vizio. My one minor issue is, due to security restrictions, I can't really save a whole lot outside of my local and it doesn't give me the option to choose my preferred directory.
I saw "download" and clicked it thinking to download the diagram and closed the webpage without looking at it. Maybe it's me, or it might need UX work.
Great website. (and I will be downloading the desktop client :)
Well no kidding. I used this a couple days ago with a coworker where we had to make a quick diagram and didn't know what to use. I searched google, this came up quickly, was able to get it on drive so he and I could each do work on it, and then able to export to pdf pretty seamlessly. Figure if it shows up on HN a few days after discovering and using it myself, I should write about the positive experience.
Last I checked you can use WSD without account just can’t save, but iirc it records to the url so you can still kinda work it. Also; could be wrong but I thought it allowed federated logins.
It’s worth it.
The syntax is stupid easy and you really would have to try to mess it up. Fast to make workflow diagrams that other people can edit.
The core team has a 15 year contract with an Atlassian consulting firm to produce and support the Confluence and Jira integrations with a revenue share model. Last financial year that earned us $3.1M, up from $1.8M the year before.
That’s great news! Draw.io is fantastic and I keep discovering new things about it. So thank you for making it easy to use with an optional rich set of options!
Thank you for keeping this open! It really is a gift to anyone who wants full control of their tools. I sometimes use it together with inkscape, tikz and graphviz.
I quite like the draw.io nextcloud app as well, though I guess it could also be a storage provider on the website for better integration :)
We recently had management ask for some diagrams of our applications infrastructure. Draw.io made that so easy with their pre-made components and export to PDF. Will definitely use it again.
I was at Amazon working on something - their own engineer was using draw.io to quickly grab AWS icons for Lambda, IoT core, API Gateway etc and place them into his flow chart.
He said they had a library somewhere of AWS artwork, but it was easier to just use draw.io’s art lib.
Ok, just a note to everyone !
It is online service and your diagrams are stored in the "cloud" and you have zero control over it.
Please, do not post your company's secret in form of diagrams. Recently, we caught one of the contractors using Draw.io to make diagrams of brand new systems that we are designing(we are fortune 40 company). System is expensive, very sensitive.
On the flip side, we use Google G Suite so the majority of our documents are stored with Google, and draw.io's cloud support seamlessly works with our G Suite drives.
Our G Suite administrators have plenty of control over the G Suite Google Drives that would be used with draw.io and our Google accounts.
The only bits of our data we don't trust with Google are PHI
This is where my reply was going. Authenication to Google Drive is client-side and direct to google.com. There is no draw.io server anywhere that can access your Google Drive.
that is if you save it, it is my understanding the actual objects drawn and linked on screen are entirely stored in the DOM of your browser until you click "save" and send it to a cloud location. "saving" to your browser or device just creates a "download" of static blob data in a variable
i have confirmed this with a local instance of draw.io
> your diagrams are stored in the "cloud" and you have zero control over it
I made a diagram on Sunday and saved it to my local device without logging in; nothing stored in the cloud. Just opened it again from my local storage and it loaded into draw.io with no problem.
Just out of curiosity can someone point me to the basis for the claim that diagrams are uploaded to some cloud storage? I've used the tool and had the impression that it was all client side in memory DOM stuff until I downloaded my diagram. I never looked if some of the content gets pushed elsewhere, how would I substantiate these claims?
> draw.io is a client-side, static web application. There is no user authenication or data storage concept in this repo. The online version stores data in mainstream cloud storage options, currently Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Github, Gitlab or Trello.
I love this about Draw.io. This is how I want to build my applications. I don't want to deal with storing any user data and rather let them handle it how they see fit.
I would also love such a library. I currently follow the same pattern of making web apps that only use local storage so I don’t have access to user data, but would like to allow users to easily use their existing cloud services for persistence.
Another cool thing they did, is they built a Sandstorm.io app back in the day. There hasn't been enough interest for them to invest a lot of resources in updating it, but I still use draw.io on my self-hosted Sandstorm server too.
I've followed draw.io back since I met them at Google I/O in like 2010 or 2011, I think they were one of Drive's first third party apps.
I love these kinds of apps, but I haven't seen any with support for self-hosted cloud storage (Nextcloud). Is there a technical limitation behind that, or is it just lack of interest?
Right, I forgot about that - I actually have it installed on my instance. But my point wasn't specifically about Draw.io, but other cloud-synced web apps like StackEdit. It seems none of them have Nextcloud as a first-class option (some have WebDAV, but that's still a lot more complicated than Dropbox etc.).
An incredibly useful tool. I started using it in university for coursework, I used it to create figures for my master's thesis, and now I use it in my industry job. I would give it the highest statement of praise you can give any software: it just works.
I really like that you can export as PNGs and embed the diagram information inside. Being able send around PNGs that everyone can view, but can still be edited with draw.io makes sharing and updating much simpler.
This is really interesting, is this (or similar to) steganography? Poked around the repo but haven't yet found where this is implemented (on either end).
From a user perspective that sounds like a super useful feature, though perhaps unexpected unless you were directly informed of it.
PNG is structured in "chunks" of data of different types, and you can add your own tool-specific types. IIRC there is even a way to indicate what other tools should do with a chunk type they don't recognise (keep it untouched or throw it away).
For those without MS Visio or other paid alternatives, Draw.io can pretty much get you covered at zero cost, with the option of doing it client-side, online, etc. Not sure if the founders have the option, but I would encourage folks to donate a couple of bucks to encourage high quality free software such as this.
I’ve found the draw.io experience to be so far above Visio that I just can’t imagine going back. I put it up there with VLC and Handbrake as quality apps.
Even as a common dirty pirate; I donated to all of those.
I'm a fan as well. My org ended up dropping our draw.io intergration in Confluence in favour of Lucidchart; I'm still not really sure why as it appears to be worse in functionality as well as slower and more tied to a cloud backend.
At some point, I actually paid for LucidChart for a year.
Last time I used it, before switching to draw.io, it became slow to the point of being unusable once you had a few pages in a document. And I was making an animation where each page showed the next step in a process, so there were a lot of pages.
This was a couple of years ago, so things may have changed since.
My diagrams may have a bunch of elements on them, but I don't think I use any advanced features (irrespective of whether it's Visio, LucidChart or draw.io). From that perspective, these isn't much difference between any of these programs, so there's just no reason to use a paid product.
Lucidchart is tiring complete :) we have a lot of data and automation features, integrations, text based diagramming, advanced shape libraries, dynamic shaped etc. Discoveravility of all the features can be lacking though because there is so much stuff. I've worked on the product for years and I still learn about new features all the time.
I wasn't trying to claim that middle mouse canvas movement didn't work in Lucidchart. The mechanism is just different, and IMO worse, than the one in draw.io. I think if you ask ten users to try both, you'll find a clear preference for the draw.io mechanism. I think it is important because it is an exceedingly commonly used feature.
I used to use Lucid a lot, since the early betas and for about 10 years.
Things I liked were that I could have a quick collaborative diagram with a friend for some bs project and not pay for it, and I could have a reasonable SAAS offering for a commercial team that wasn't expensive enough I got pushback. It was always a bit slow, and sometime quirky about connection placements but the diagrams were acceptable quality. Early on it was a lot less polished but you could make it work. And it was never a tool I'd use every day or realistically even every month, so it needed to be fairly low cost but I was happy to pay for when I did need it.
Now it is effectively impractical without a subscription so I can't use it for the former case. And the team offering are more enterprise-y and about double the price without adding any functionality I care about, so I tend not to do that either.
At some point I moved companies and didn't suggest a new team subscription, where previously I was usually the advocate for it. And the upsell messages and limitations of the free tier led me to find draw.io, which meets my needs for one-offs and little side projects as well as Lucid Chart ever did.
I'd say functionally they are mostly on par currently for my usages ... but that's the crux of your problem as a 10/month/head subscription.
Oh, and fwiw I use the offline version of draw.io most of the time, it's very responsive and also I like to work sometimes offline.
> In what ways is Lucidchart worse in functionality?
draw.io is like the In-N-Out of charting software. The menu is short, but you know exactly what you're getting each time and the price is right. It may not be the best at everything, but I'm almost never disappointed.
Lucidchart feels like that neighborhood restaurant that has a six page menu that tries to be everything to everyone. It feels like they should have anything I desire, but they're spread so thin across so many options that they can never really perfect any of the individual entrees. I can usually find something in Lucidchart that looks like it would solve my problem, but it always feels half-finished. I waste hours each month learning to work around the quirks and limitations of the different components. I always leave slightly dissatisfied that Lucidchart almost did what I needed, but due to the limitations of the component I would have been better off just drawing a simple chart in draw.io or even in Sketch.
For example: The Lucidchart iPad app sounds like a dream come true. I would love to make charts on the go with a great iPad interface that properly utilizes the Apple Pencil. However, every time I use Lucidchart on iPad I spend all my time accidentally moving the page when I wanted to drag the corner of box, failing to select text for editing, switching between fingers and Pencil, and so on. I end up walking back to a computer to finish the chart. I want to believe the Lucidchart iPad app would be great, but I always spend so much time fighting it that I'd be better off sitting down with draw.io and making a basic chart in 10 minutes.
This has been my go-to software for making diagrams since I was an undergrad. Absolutely stunning. I recommend their stand-alone version for offline editing as well.
I used to use Draw.io a lot more than I do now, and it is a wonderful tool, the only reason I use it less now is because I've been using:
PlantUML (http://plantuml.com/) with demo at (http://planttext.com). Creating most diagrams through a simple markup language that can be version controlled and rendered on demand has been really nice for me, and sometimes I would spent SO MUCH TIME in draw.io making sure my arrows were even, making the pixels line up, making sure I used the right shape with the right font size, etc, that it was liberating to just succinctly describe my data and have it automatically render.
For more complex diagrams or to plan a diagram, I've also gone back to paper. There really is nothing better than a notebook in front of you and a collection of colored pens and stencils.
> I would spent SO MUCH TIME in draw.io making sure my arrows were even, making the pixels line up, making sure I used the right shape with the right font size, etc,
I think most of us feel this!
I agree PlantUML makes that a lot easier. The thing is, the second you need to make something other than a UML, you’re going to another tool.
That said, while draw.io does an excellent job of their connector and arrow system usually getting it close, a UML or some sort of “strict grid mode” would be nice.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 225 ms ] threadGreat website. (and I will be downloading the desktop client :)
brew cask install drawio
Pretty rare for software imo.
For me, the biggest advantage Draw.io has over many of its competitors is that it can be self-hosted.
It’s worth it.
The syntax is stupid easy and you really would have to try to mess it up. Fast to make workflow diagrams that other people can edit.
I quite like the draw.io nextcloud app as well, though I guess it could also be a storage provider on the website for better integration :)
I was at Amazon working on something - their own engineer was using draw.io to quickly grab AWS icons for Lambda, IoT core, API Gateway etc and place them into his flow chart.
He said they had a library somewhere of AWS artwork, but it was easier to just use draw.io’s art lib.
Addtionally, you can deploy a local version via docker, or use the stand-alone desktop version, https://github.com/jgraph/drawio has the links.
Our G Suite administrators have plenty of control over the G Suite Google Drives that would be used with draw.io and our Google accounts.
The only bits of our data we don't trust with Google are PHI
i have confirmed this with a local instance of draw.io
If you save it in your Google Drive, you can control who has access. Even better if it's your organization's GSuite
I made a diagram on Sunday and saved it to my local device without logging in; nothing stored in the cloud. Just opened it again from my local storage and it loaded into draw.io with no problem.
But... the offline tool is superior for speed and UX imo. That’s where it really shines.
I love this about Draw.io. This is how I want to build my applications. I don't want to deal with storing any user data and rather let them handle it how they see fit.
Anybody know of a library of service (preferably open source) that offers an easy API to interact with all these in such a way?
https://github.com/jvilk/BrowserFS/blob/master/README.md
Here's our open source file picker: https://github.com/kloudless/file-explorer/ (the server-side is closed source and requires a paid subscription beyond a point)
Only other option I could find is https://github.com/rclone/rclone but it's a commandline tool
https://remotestoragejs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting-sta...
I've followed draw.io back since I met them at Google I/O in like 2010 or 2011, I think they were one of Drive's first third party apps.
From a user perspective that sounds like a super useful feature, though perhaps unexpected unless you were directly informed of it.
Even as a common dirty pirate; I donated to all of those.
(former employee)
(disclaimer: employee of Lucid Software)
Last time I used it, before switching to draw.io, it became slow to the point of being unusable once you had a few pages in a document. And I was making an animation where each page showed the next step in a process, so there were a lot of pages.
This was a couple of years ago, so things may have changed since.
My diagrams may have a bunch of elements on them, but I don't think I use any advanced features (irrespective of whether it's Visio, LucidChart or draw.io). From that perspective, these isn't much difference between any of these programs, so there's just no reason to use a paid product.
Yes, Lucidchart's performance has improved in the past couple years. And we now have resources dedicated to improving performance.
> From that perspective, these isn't much difference between any of these programs, so there's just no reason to use a paid product.
That's fair. I think Lucidchart's main advantage is more advanced functionality. And if you don't need that functionality, why pay for it?
Things I liked were that I could have a quick collaborative diagram with a friend for some bs project and not pay for it, and I could have a reasonable SAAS offering for a commercial team that wasn't expensive enough I got pushback. It was always a bit slow, and sometime quirky about connection placements but the diagrams were acceptable quality. Early on it was a lot less polished but you could make it work. And it was never a tool I'd use every day or realistically even every month, so it needed to be fairly low cost but I was happy to pay for when I did need it.
Now it is effectively impractical without a subscription so I can't use it for the former case. And the team offering are more enterprise-y and about double the price without adding any functionality I care about, so I tend not to do that either.
At some point I moved companies and didn't suggest a new team subscription, where previously I was usually the advocate for it. And the upsell messages and limitations of the free tier led me to find draw.io, which meets my needs for one-offs and little side projects as well as Lucid Chart ever did.
I'd say functionally they are mostly on par currently for my usages ... but that's the crux of your problem as a 10/month/head subscription.
Oh, and fwiw I use the offline version of draw.io most of the time, it's very responsive and also I like to work sometimes offline.
draw.io is like the In-N-Out of charting software. The menu is short, but you know exactly what you're getting each time and the price is right. It may not be the best at everything, but I'm almost never disappointed.
Lucidchart feels like that neighborhood restaurant that has a six page menu that tries to be everything to everyone. It feels like they should have anything I desire, but they're spread so thin across so many options that they can never really perfect any of the individual entrees. I can usually find something in Lucidchart that looks like it would solve my problem, but it always feels half-finished. I waste hours each month learning to work around the quirks and limitations of the different components. I always leave slightly dissatisfied that Lucidchart almost did what I needed, but due to the limitations of the component I would have been better off just drawing a simple chart in draw.io or even in Sketch.
For example: The Lucidchart iPad app sounds like a dream come true. I would love to make charts on the go with a great iPad interface that properly utilizes the Apple Pencil. However, every time I use Lucidchart on iPad I spend all my time accidentally moving the page when I wanted to drag the corner of box, failing to select text for editing, switching between fingers and Pencil, and so on. I end up walking back to a computer to finish the chart. I want to believe the Lucidchart iPad app would be great, but I always spend so much time fighting it that I'd be better off sitting down with draw.io and making a basic chart in 10 minutes.
PlantUML (http://plantuml.com/) with demo at (http://planttext.com). Creating most diagrams through a simple markup language that can be version controlled and rendered on demand has been really nice for me, and sometimes I would spent SO MUCH TIME in draw.io making sure my arrows were even, making the pixels line up, making sure I used the right shape with the right font size, etc, that it was liberating to just succinctly describe my data and have it automatically render.
For more complex diagrams or to plan a diagram, I've also gone back to paper. There really is nothing better than a notebook in front of you and a collection of colored pens and stencils.
I think most of us feel this!
I agree PlantUML makes that a lot easier. The thing is, the second you need to make something other than a UML, you’re going to another tool.
That said, while draw.io does an excellent job of their connector and arrow system usually getting it close, a UML or some sort of “strict grid mode” would be nice.
[1] http://plantuml.com/en/skinparam
[2] http://plantuml.com/es/style-evolution