I don’t mean to add to the blog echo chamber, but I read Simon Horwith’s blog post Online Diagramming and had to share the love on my own blog. I love the concept of diagramming but unfortunately have always done my diagramming with a pencil and paper because available software was either incompatible with my work process or too expensive.

On the other hand, I have managed to make an entirely paperless documentation process, but this naturally never included any visually stimulating diagrams to document project logic or organization.

Welcome to Gliffy. It’s simply a Flash-based app that covers just the basics of diagramming, and like many apps, it is the absence of feature bloat that makes this app so nice. It allows you to print or save your diagrams in several image formats, or it will even host the file for you so that all you have to do is link to the generated image. The process is pleasantly simple.

It even has some simple revision control. And when you make a new revision by saving the document, any links to the hosted file are automatically updated with the latest version. Nice!

Don’t be dissuaded by the pricing page on Gliffy’s website! The pricing is just for hosting the app on your own server (which I think is a worthwhile consideration for any business who is serious about documentation). For us poor folk, the Gliffy service on their website is free of charge.