The Omni Group

We've added a couple of small fixes in this beta release, one that has to do with canvas names being incorrect on an export to HTML imagemap that was due to a different fix in beta 1, and Bézier lines should be back to normal, with the addtition of routing better according to their control handles when both endpoints are in the same location.

The beta's at the bottom of the download page, as are the release notes, short as they are.

We've made fixes to some pesky bugs that got missed during the development of OmniGraffle for iPad, and made some modifications to some of the built-in stencils, and added file settings for all exported OmniGraffle document types to better help getting your files over to the iPad.

Full release notes and download links at the bottom of the download page.

You guys, I hope you're not getting sick of our customer stories, but even if you ARE, you should stick around for this one. Because it's awesome. And involves monsters. 

Today we're going to be taking a look at how a comic artist uses OmniGraffle as his primary drawing tool, thanks to some fantastic info sent in by Simone Poggi. Simone is a developer/designer/illustrator who draws comics in his spare time—he's currently publishing his fantasy comic Another One Quest to Dust on the App Store, and he's working on an Android survival fantasy game as well. 

He writes,

I use Graffle to draw, it's like paper and pencil for me. Over the years Graffle has become my primary drawing tool, extending the way I create stuff to a whole new level. Today my skill with Graffle neatly surpass my freehand drawing abilities.

I have to say, out of the many ways I've seen OmniGraffle being used, I think this might be one of the most fun. It's never even occurred to me that you could create an entire comic with OmniGraffle, but of course you can! It just goes to show that my rejected marketing tagline, "OmniGraffle: Not Just For Diagramming Although It Is Very Good At Diagramming All We're Saying is That You Can, Like, Totally Use it for Other Stuff Too", was right all along.

Simone tells us which features are most helpful for him:

I really love the way Graffle manages the Bezier shapes and colors because it's really, really simple and intuitive, but at the same time it's powerful. You can easily create any shape, apply a color or a texture to it, set the desired transparency, and change a thousand options (gradients, shadows, rotation, scale, etc) to perfectly fit your needs. You can finely set your working area by giving your desired resolution in various unit measures.The level/layer/working area options are really useful as well to manage images, background and graphical effects in a separate way, without interfering with other parts of the image. Furthermore the export function works great and you can export in a wide array of filetypes, deciding (if allowed by the format) to set a transparent background or not.

You're thinking, that's great and all, but how does one go about drawing shiny stuff that rocks in OmniGraffle? Well, it is mighty convenient that you phrased your thoughts in that specific way, because Simone put together a tutorial to show you exactly how to do this. Let's take a look (Simone's instructions are in bold):

Start with a blank document, then:

Click on the Pen Tool (what Simone is describing as "new bezier shape") and place the points in the drawing area as shown in the above picture. Hold "command" key and drag one point away to generate a bezier curve from the selected point. If you need an asymmetric spline, just hold "alt" key while dragging the vector, this would modify only one vector of them instead of both.

We have a fine head shape: add the eyes from the stencils (drag out circles from the Shape stencil), resize and place them at the proper position

Now we have to tweak the line's details to improve the epicness factor of our masterpiece. We will enhance the thickness of the head's shape by selecting it, and setting to 4 pixels.

(Hee. Improving the epicness factor.)

Let's give some color to our creation. First, the background: change the color through the inspector button in the "fill" tab. Repeat and do the same for the eyes and the head as shown below:

Our work is almost ready! Now let's add some shinies with a glass effect!

Copy / paste the head shape, then add a new circle:

Select both the new head and the newly created circle, go to "edit" > "shapes" > "intersect shapes" menu. We now have a new object, shaped as the intersection from the head's shape and the new circle's shape.

Edit the newly obtained shape as follows: 

... and place it over the original head:

Our monster now is quite nice, but it looks like he's floating in air, let's fix this!

Through the stencil panel insert a new circle, then change his properties as follows:

- shape the circle as an oval

- fill with solid color: black 30% transparency

- no border, no shadow

Now we have to put this shadow under the monster: select the shape, then click on the "send to background" button:

Finished! Our masterpiece is done for now! You may save and exit or export your creation in various formats, to share it with your friends and with your enemies, too.

Hello, AWESOME. I know what I'll be doing for the rest of my afternoon. Monsters ahoy!

I asked Simone if there was anything he could change about OmniGraffle, and he conceded there are a few things that bug him:

Each time I double-click somewhere (as I often do when I try to insert additional points to a previuosly created shape) Graffle adds a text label. I hate that feature and I wanna kill it personally from a menu option in the preferences.

Yes, this can be annoying—I've encountered it too. Be sure that when you're double-clicking to add a point, you're doing so on the edge of the shape itself so you won't get that pesky label.

There is no way to draw an "open" Bezier shape. Every time you create a new shape, you can only choose between applying a border to it or nor. It would be great if I can choose to create a "broken shape" in a fast way. Actually i have to draw the shape and then redraw a Bezier Line over it.

Gotcha. Our intrepid OmniGraffle product manager, Joel, tells me this is a filed feature request, so hopefully you'll see it addressed in an upcoming release. Also, just so you know, this feature is currently implemented in OmniGraffle for iPad.

I'd really like to use gradient colors for the lines as it is now for the shape's area.

A workaround idea: create a slightly smaller shape, and place it on top of the larger shape so you can see the outline. Voila, hacked gradient outline!

Graffle still does not make coffee! Please stop disappointing me and implement this feature.

Simone, I could not agree with you more. I am emailing our engineers RIGHT NOW to find out the reasoning behind this critical design flaw.

A huge thank you to Simone for providing all this great information. You can find Simone on his website, and check out his Another One Quest to Dust comic online or on the App Store. If you'd like a copy of the OmniGraffle file he used to create this tutorial, you can download it here. 

Two and a half months ago, I announced that we were planning to bring all five of our productivity apps to iPad.  Two weeks later, I wrote about some of the steps we were taking to make that happen.  Now that iPad has shipped, I thought it might be good to review where we are now, and what our plans are going forward:

As the above graphic indicates, we've already made some great progress: two apps down, three to go!

OmniGraffle and OmniGraphSketcher are available now: they both launched with the App Store, and they've both been very well received—with App Store ratings averaging four stars. Of course, those were just our 1.0 releases, and we're not standing still: OmniGraphSketcher 1.1 for iPad adds data import and is already available as a free App Store update, while OmniGraffle 1.1 improves performance and stability and overall user experience and will be submitted to Apple for review very soon.

Meanwhile, I'm sure many of you are wondering about the other three apps: OmniFocus, OmniOutliner, and OmniPlan. We're currently working on OmniFocus and OmniOutliner in parallel. OmniFocus has a bit of a head start, thanks to the work we'd already done in bringing it to iPhone, so we anticipate its iPad app will be ready in June. OmniOutliner is a little further out, and our current projection is that it will ship this summer. Finally, after we've shipped those four apps, we'll round out the set with OmniPlan for iPad which we're currently anticipating will ship sometime this fall.

So that's where our iPad apps are today, and where we're going! Thanks for taking the time to read this, and for all of your support: over these first two weeks OmniGraffle has sold several thousand copies, making it one of the top apps in the iPad App Store! We've had a pretty amazing journey so far, and we couldn't do it without you.

As always, I'd welcome any feedback you might have: leave a comment here or send me a message on twitter (where you'll find me at @kcase).

Today's customer story comes from Aaron, who works as a problem solver for a large company that develops software for the healthcare industry.

(Side note: I have to admit I'm a little intimidated by someone whose actual job title involves solving problems. You know, speaking as someone who has on more than one occasion found herself shoving as hard as possible against a door clearly marked "PULL", just like that old Far Side cartoon.) 

Aaron writes,

I really love using diagrams as a way to help me think and keep my ideas organized.  When I was in college taking computer science classes, I used OmniGraffle to take notes.  You can't get through a computer science class without drawing a ton of diagrams, and with my lousy handwriting (and affinity for keeping everything neatly on my Mac for later use) I decided to give OmniGraffle a shot.  At first, it was very difficult to keep up with the professor writing diagrams on the whiteboard, but I quickly learned to use OmniGraffle's nifty keyboard shortcuts. I also made stencils for the most common building blocks of the data structures I was making diagrams of.  That, plus liberal use of copying and pasting, allowed me to efficiently take notes, and sometimes do it even more quickly than my classmates—it's common for something to get drawn on the board that's important, but then the professor erases a few parts and replaces those with new parts to make a whole new diagram.  On paper, this means quickly trying to draw your diagram again.  In OmniGraffle, it's a quick copy and paste. 

Here are a few screenshots of Aaron's old Graffle-created class notes:

He acknowledges these aren't necessarily the fanciest diagrams ever, and reminds us that when you're taking notes in class, you usually don't spend a ton of time making them super pretty. Totally understood! They look a heck of a lot nicer than MY class notes, which are typically covered in my pen doodle artistic specialty: the Tornado.

Just to show you what that last diagram could look like with a little fancifying, our User Experience Lead, Bill, took a few minutes to whip up a new version:

Coooooooooool.

Aaron adds that Graffle is also a fantastic general purpose layout program for designing GUI mockups, and shares one more example of his with us:

The thing I love about Graffle is that you can do almost anything with it.  Yes, it is marketed as a diagramming program, but it's also fantastic for doing desktop publishing layouts.  It's also a very respectable vector graphics drawing program, giving people the ability to quickly create things that might otherwise take a lot more effort in Illustrator.  It's beautiful to see how open ended it is.  

Now, most of the time company use case articles don't include anything other than glowing praise for the app in question, but we know that in real life software isn't 100% perfect 100% of the time. I asked Aaron if there was anything he would add to OmniGraffle if he could, and here's what he suggested:

Although I used Graffle to take notes, it's not a note-taking program, and there are some features that I'd love to see OmniGraffle have that would make it more conducive to Graffle-wielding notetakers like myself.  First, I'd like to have the ability to record classes and meetings with OmniGraffle and have the sound sync up with the edits I'm making to the document.  This would effectively eliminate my need to copy and paste diagrams just to show a progression of edits, and it would have made studying a heck of a lot easier.  You'd just have to hit play, and you're off!  Another thing that would be really cool to see in Graffle would be interactive collaboration on documents in real time (think Google Wave).  Perhaps it's a little out there, but the tools Graffle gives me to make awesome stuff are fantastic, and it makes me want to use them everywhere!

Cool suggestions, Aaron, and they've been entered in the Official Omni Bug Tracking System Which Also Tracks Feature Requests. 

Aaron tells us that now that his student days are behind him, he still keeps OmniGraffle in his arsenal of tools. 

The software I work with often has extensive relationships between different records that are used to configure the software, and if I'm troubleshooting an issue, I fire up OmniGraffle and diagram it out so I can keep my wits about me. 

Our software helps an official problem solver keep his wits about him, how awesome is that? 

Aaron can be found on Twitter at @harpaa01. Thanks for sharing your story with us, Aaron!

You know, you always think the countdown to a product launch is going to be exciting, but you forget about the part where it's actually just, you know, just kind of INSANE. Especially when the products in question are tied to a brand new hardware device. 

We are both thrilled and relieved to finally let you know that our first iPad apps, OmniGraffle and OmniGraphSketcher, are available on the App Store. If you're the sort who enjoys a tasty corporate press release, the officially-formatted mumbo jumbo is here (spoiler: it basically says OmniGraffle and OmniGraphSketcher for iPad are, wait for it, available on the App Store).

You can also read up on some of the reasons why we chose to develop for the iPad and how we went about doing so, check out the Macworld coverage on the new apps, and enjoy this Mashable list of their top 10 iPad apps they can't wait to use (#5, holla!).

We've also put together a little Q&A, for some questions we've legitimately been asked and some stuff we, ah, totally made up for the purpose of fleshing out this blog post. Ahem.

Can I download a trial of these apps?

Unfortunately, the App Store does not yet provide that option. 

So how am I supposed to figure out if I want them or not? 

Check out our website, where we've got overviews of both products as well as introductory videos. 

(Here's the OmniGraffle page and video, and the OmniGraphSketcher page and video.)

You could also download trial versions of the Mac apps if you'd like to get familiar with how they work in general. Obviously, it's going to be a different user experience on the iPad—one we hope you really enjoy!—but many of the features you can use on the Mac will be available on the iPad.

If you have any questions about how either app works, you're more than welcome to contact our wily Support Ninjas. 

I have the Mac version, can I get a discount on the iPad version?

We're generally happy to offer bundle pricing for products purchased through our own online store, but there's no way to do that when selling through the App Store. We've tried to make sure that each product is priced reasonably based on individual feature sets, and we hope you'll agree that both products become even more valuable when you use them together.

Can I open my existing OmniGraffle/OmniGraphSketcher documents on OmniGraffle/OmniGraphSketcher for iPad?

Yes! Currently the easiest way to transfer the documents created on the desktop to your iPad is via email.

I notice that OmniGraffle for iPad costs $50 and I think that's too much.

Well . . . that's not really a question, but to give you some background on our pricing decision, we followed a similar model to what Apple used for iWork, where there's a $79 suite on the desktop, and the iPad versions of the apps making up the suite now cost $30. OmniGraffle for iPad sells for half of what OmniGraffle for Mac costs.

Given the choice between two editions on the Mac, Standard for $99 and Pro for $199, twice as many of our customers choose Pro for $199.  (And before you think that's overpriced, if you wanted to buy a similar app for Windows you'd be looking at Visio--which retails at $259 for Standard and $559 for Pro.) $50 may be too much to spend on entertainment (although many console games cost more), but we don't intend OmniGraffle as a casual purchase: OmniGraffle for iPad is designed as a professional productivity tool, one which will make you more productive and will save you time and money every week.

We feel confident you will be happy with the depth of the feature set, pleasantly surprised by some brand-new options only available on the iPad, and overall find OmniGraffle for iPad to be a good value. As always, we welcome your feedback, so feel free to talk to us about any concerns you have!

Do I have to have an iPad to use these new apps?

It depends on how vivid of an imagination you have.

I'm sold! Where do I buy this stuff?

The App Store, natch. Here's the direct iTunes link for OmniGraffle, and for OmniGraphSketcher. We really hope you enjoy them. Happy iPadding!

Amidst all the craziness going on with iPad development, this version of OmniGraffle got pushed to the wayside a wee tad, we've basically been ready to go final with it but kept delaying the release in order to work on that other OmniGraffle project.

To sum up (for those of you who may not have been keeping up with the beta releases), we've added some preferences to disable the Multi-Touch trackpad gestures, as well as some preferences for dealing with momentum scrolling if you're using a Magic Mouse, and fixed a fair number of bugs associated with shared layers and Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard".

You can find the disk images to download at our newly-revamped downloads page, and read up at the historical release notes page.

Between iPad development meetings, wireframing, mocking things up, and general UI theorycrafting, I managed to remember to release OmniGraffle 5.2.2 rc 1, but almost forgot to tell anyone about it.

So, beta testing went well, and we're here at release candidate stage. Simple enough.

You may find the release candidate at our beta page, and as always, release notes await.

There just happens to be another platform that we sometimes develop for, that's not the iPad, and as such we've just released a beta version of OmniGraffle and OmniGraffle Professional 5.2.2.

This release contains a good many bug fixes dealing with shared layers and Mac OS 10.6 compatibility, along with fixes to a number of crashes when working with Visio files, PDFs, and subgraphs.

We've added a preference to turn off multi-touch gestures on laptops that have that feature, and a last-minute hidden preference to disable the scrollwheel to zoom in and out when Commmand is held down, for those of you using Apple's new Magic Mouse.

Much more information is in the release notes page, and downloads are on the beta page.

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