This is a guest post from Carole Snitzer, Product Marketing Manager for Gliffy, a visualization and diagramming add-on listed in the Atlassian Marketplace.
Today marks a revolution in the history of Gliffy as we launch our brand-new Gliffy Confluence Plugin 5.0, in HTML5 for the first time! For you, that means Gliffy is faster, smoother, and better integrated with Confluence than ever before. For us, it means a whole new way of thinking about our product.
The HTML5 Revolution
When our CEO, Chris Kohlhardt, guest blogged here last spring, he talked about the technical challenges on our Road to HTML5. We walked into the transformation with our eyes open, knowing that rebuilding the plugin in HTML5 is one of the most important things we’ve ever done, and that moving Gliffy to the best technology available for web applications would make things possible for us that we could never have done in Flash.
It hasn’t been easy on our developers, but the payoff is amazing. In HTML5 there is no compile step, so our productivity is higher than ever. There are great debugging and unit-testing tools available for HTML5, like Firebug and Jasmine. And, best of all, the HTML5 community is a thriving, vibrant, growing network of software engineers who are constantly building and, even better, opensourcing new frameworks and plugins practically every day. And we have to say, it feels great to be part of that movement.
Also, new features!
We also managed to sneak in a few new features and upgrades while we were rewriting all that code:
- The HTML5 editor is faster and snappier on most modern browsers.
- The new color picker keeps track of your most recently used colors, so it’s easier to create beautiful diagrams with custom colors.
- The revamped interface is lighter, cleaner, and more tightly integrated with the Confluence environment.
- Undo/redo have been amped up for more control, and now they have buttons on the toolbar!
- Snap-to-grid placement and drawing guides make it easy to create sharp, perfectly aligned diagrams.
- Smart copy and paste remember relative positioning, so you can create grid layouts with the push of a button.
- Keyboard shortcuts work much better in the new HTML5 app, even on Macs!
Upgrade to the Gliffy Confluence Plugin 5.0
Install or upgrade Gliffy in Confluence instantly using the Universal Plugin Manager, or download version 5.0 of the Gliffy Confluence Plugin from the Atlassian Marketplace.