One of the recent sites that caught my eye was Gliffy. Gliffy is another one of those tools that Web 2.0 has given to us. It is an ingenious site that is still in its beta. Gliffy is all about diagrams. The word “diagram” is a bit too dangerously school-like for me. Well, the idea is to mean technical drawings.

You could be designing a web page for someone in the UK. It would indeed be a long process to create a prototype on your computer and send it over to him for approval. You could be wanting to ask your sister in the USA as to how to rearrange the furniture in your bed room. You might want to show a simple process flow to a colleague in Delhi. A quick conversation on the net can only do so much to convey pictures and visuals. Well, how many of us can draw a square on Yahoo Doodle IMvironment? It is in these occasions that Gliffy will come in handy.

Gliffy allows you to create diagrams on the fly without the need to download any software. Certainly one more of those Web 2.0 wonders. It gives to you a number of premade symbols and shapes which you can incorporate in your drawings. You can create a comprehensive process flowchart with available shapes and connectors.

You can create a complete home with furniture, wall colours, floor patterns and upholstery. Gliffy allows you to manipulate the distances , the spaces between objects. There is a grid (removable) for proper measurement of sizes in your diagrams.

It is possible to create the prototypes for an entire web page or software interface, with Gliffy. It contains object models for all components in a user interface.

You can create graphic representations for abstract concepts such as “data flow” or “network security”. The best part however comes only after all these. The “Share” option enables you to publish your diagram to your blog or web site. You can download the images in different sizes and send them across to people you may want to show them to.

Gliffy interface is extremely user-friendly and fast considering it is still in its beta. We can look forward to more features and functionalities in the successive versions.

Note: I have previously published this article at Desicritics – Spiffy Drawings with Gliffy

Technorati Tags: gliffy, online diagrams, diagram