Lovely Charts

We just pushed Beta 3 out a few minutes ago, and I have to say, it’s a huge update!

Before getting into this release’s details, I need to start with a slightly negative, but important note: with this update, major changes occured, that notably affected both the coordinate system used in LC and the resize mechanisms, implying the content of previously saved diagrams has “moved”, both in size and position… In order to limit the trouble, we ran an upgrade script that moved existing diagrams in a position pretty close to where they were originally created, but it’s definitely not perfect, and your diagrams have probably slightly changed by now… Sorry about that, that’s part of the risk with Beta software, it’s not finished yet and things that might change as the product evolves towards a stable public release…

Now, that being said, this release is a HUGE step forward, tons of bugs were corrected, and many many many enhancements implemented for a better user experience! Here are some random notes on what has been changed/done:

• “Getting started” experience: first time users, and users that haven’t saved a diagram yet now have the possibility to watch a short tutorial that will guide them through Lovely Charts main features in 90 seconds.
• Smooth transitions: that’s a bit of eye candy thing, but transitions between dialogs are now animated, for a lovely-er experience :).
• Delete diagrams: you now have the possibility to delete existing diagrams, especially useful for free account owners who are limited to one editable diagram at the time per account.
• Tools panel: secundary options, such as Align options, are now isolated from the Tools panel, and in color, for a better legibility and clarity of the UI.
• Zooming and Panning buttons were added to the tools list for an easier access.
• Zooming is now centered.
• Mouse wheel support: PC users (sorry Mac guys, Flash player limitation) can now zoom in and out of their diagrams using their mouse wheel.
• SPACE bar panning: this is something most people used to graphics software are accustomed to: when holding the SPACE bar down, you can move the canvas around, without needing to zoom or lose context by searching for scrollbars.
• No more scrollbars: a logical consequence of the enhancements above, since your canvas is virtually unlimited in size, scrollbars as such didn’t make much sense anyway. Use panning (either by holding the SPACE bar or by selecting the Hand tool) instead.
• Keyboard shortcuts work! Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+V, isn’t that’s cool? :)
• Undo/Redo works! … maybe not pefect yet (you tell me), but it should really really work quite well now.
• Intelligent flipping: Horizontal and Vertical flipping was already implemented in a previous beta release, it was now extended to support all components, in an individualized way so that they can be used in many situations… For example, flipping the speech bubble allows you change the bubble tail’s position, flipping a checkbox horizontally will give you a checkbox with its label on the left, and last but not least, flipping a text symbol , will change its alignment and base position, for a precise positioning… Try it out, you’ll see what we mean :)
• New default sitemap symbol: we realized that, no matter how sexy they look, the original “pages” symbols we had created, were probably a bit too fancy for most users… The new symbol is efficient, simple, sexy… and probably much more universal.
• No more automatic changes rules for sitemaps. When you created a sitemap, the first symbol was presumed to be the Home page, intermediate symbols were considered sections, and finally we had pages… This was fun, but real world usage showed us it was probably not very efficient, so we decided to go for the simpler symbol all the way.
• Connection types default: once you select a connection type (straight, curved, orthogonal), all new connections will be automatically given that type by default.
• Much better, precise and efficient resize snapping
• Resize by opposite corner: that was a hard one to decide upon. A large amount of testers were happy with the previous system, while many complained and requested that change. To make a long story short, the latter won, and moving an handle will now resize the symbol with the opposite corner staying in place. Holding the Alt key while resizing will give you a resize by center. Overall, I think this is much better now :)
• Components not affected by text input/resize: components labels used to be included in the overall symbol size, which implied that text quantity has an impact on the symbol’s size, which in turn lead into many unsuspected issues… Anyway, that “feature” is very useful for some symbols (flowchart symbols for example), but was a pain for other symbols, generally what I’d call “pictographic” symbols, such as network symbols. So what we did is defining at a symbol’s level whether text was to be treated as part of the symbol, or not… And believe me, it works great :).
• Better rotation hit area. Rotate and resize were a bit confusing because of the hit area set for the rotate action. It is now smaller, round, and isolated from the resize area, making it all much easier.
• “Diagrams not saved” warnings: if you attempt to close a tab, or even the browser window, with an opened diagram that has unsaved changes, warnings will popup, asking for confirmation, so that you don’t lose hours of work inadvertently.
• Last but not least, TONS of bugs were corrected :)

Honestly, and modestly, this release should be a major step towards a stable public release. HUGE THANK YOU to all those whop contributed to the effort either by submitting bugs and/or enhancement requests or donating to “the cause”…. We’ll add a hell lot of testers to the current user base in the upcoming hours, really looking forward to see how you feel about this, girls and guys !