18 Feb 2019

Grafio 4 Highlights

Written by Stoyan Marinov. Posted in Grafio

After a long silence, we’re almost ready to launch Grafio 4. Some of the notable improvements to expect:

  • iCloud support
  • Standard file browsing interface
  • Other cloud services supported in the Files app
  • 3000+ free new icons
  • Precision toolbar
  • Library search
  • Handwriting notes in each shape

There are a few important considerations:

  • In order to become cloud-compliant, the document format had to be changed. Once you run Grafio 4 for the first time, it will automatically convert all of your existing projects to the new format. This means those files will not be supported by Grafio 3 apps (on other devices) anymore.
  • All the converted existing documents will be saved in the device’s local storage as they were in Grafio 3. From then on, if you’d like to move them to the cloud, you need to do that by yourself and choose the folder(s) they are supposed to stay in the future.
  • The user interface is deliberately the same as Grafio 3 in order to keep existing users comfortable. Don’t expect a flashy new outlook, most of the work has been done deep below the surface.

Why so long?

Good observers would ask – why did it take such a long time to introduce “standard” features such as cloud support. To make the long story short – we had to waste a big chunk of time rebuilding the data model in a few wrong formats. This happened since every new format introduced another insurmountable challenge – missing document thumbnails, third-party cloud service incompatibility, sluggish performance, just to name a few. So, after restarting the transition process so many times from scratch we finally hope it works as expected now.

Stay tuned!

02 Jun 2016

Is Mark Zuckerberg using Grafio?

Written by Ten Touch. Posted in Motivation, Productivity

mark-zuckerber-diagram

 

 

This morning, a day in the office like any other I was drinking coffee and going trough Facebook posts when suddenly a cool diagram appeared. Mark Zuckerberg had posted this diagram explaining how the communication with the ISS was made in order for Facebook to broadcast the first ever Facebook Live video from Space. There were other live broadcasts from space before so nothing really special but the diagram was very cool and sort of familiar. 

Screen Shot 2016-06-02 at 12.54.33 PM

original image that mark posted

Original diagram that Mark Zuckerberg posted

Something about that diagram was very familiar to our team so we started to wonder if there is a chance it was made with Grafio. Being the makers of Grafio someone like Mark using our App would have been so awesome for us. 

Btw. Our team is from Bulgaria and the internet says Mark has Bulgarian heritage and was even named after his grandfather “Marko” . So it would not be such a coincidence if he is using Bulgarian software ? Right?

All jokes aside I grabbed an iPad and 20 minutes later I had replicated this exact diagram in Grafio. Here it is.

Made-in-grafio

You can download it from our examples page and edit it in Grafio. 

Is Mark using Grafio?

Answering the question we were asking our team. Is Mark Zuckerberg indeed using Grafio or is he using another diagramming app. When you compare the two images obviously the colors are different. The icon of the ISS is also different. Other than that it’s an absolutely identical diagram. It might very well be made in Grafio. But we can’t answer if it was or it isn’t for sure.

No matter what the answer is what’s important here is that diagrams are a great way to explain stuff and you should make more of them.  

 

01 Dec 2015

Capture your ideas

Written by Ten Touch. Posted in Motivation, Productivity

captureideas

You are sleeping and having a dream. You wake up and for a brief moment(a couple of seconds) you remember it and then it’s gone forever. Your dream just vanishes in thin air. The same thing happens to your ideas. 

Memories worth more than ideas

This all has to do with our memory. As humans we have immediate and long-term memory. It’s the same way with computers, they have RAM Memory and a hard drive. When you wake up from a dream you are granted access to your memory but the command for it to be deleted has already been initiated. Yes we have a very good long-term memory but there is a very good filter applied to it so not everything is going there. Continue reading “Capture your ideas”

19 Nov 2015

Prototyping with Grafio

Written by Ivelin Georgiev. Posted in Grafio

A prototype is initial sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or idea or just to learning from. In software development, prototyping is often basic working model of product or system for demonstration purposes. The word itself derives from from Greek prototypon “a first or primitive form”, more info about the etymology of the word can be found here.

UI Prototyping

User Interface(UI) prototyping is analysis technique in which users are actively involved with their feedback to help the developers/designers to improve the system UI design and experience. Below we will describe the steps involved in that process and examine the logic behind every step in the process.

UI Prototyping Process, Grafio

In the flowchart above you see the following steps for mentioned process:
Step 1. Determine the needs of your users and improve their experience by deciding how to evolve the essential parts of your UI. Continue reading “Prototyping with Grafio”

18 Nov 2015

Productivity, Work & Sport

Written by Stoyan Marinov. Posted in Grafio, Motivation

Did you know that sport has a strong relationship to work and productivity?

A major study, commissioned by professional services recruitment and talent agency, Hudson, has evaluated the impact of sporting success and failure on the UK workplace. The research has been conducted by The Social Issues Research Centre, an independent, non-profit organisation founded to conduct research on social and lifestyle issues, monitor and assess global sociocultural trends and provide new insights on human behavior and social relations.

The results reveal that sport can have positive effect on boosting morale and improving mood, motivation and productivity in the working environment.

Sports and Productivity

Continue reading “Productivity, Work & Sport”

10 Nov 2015

11.11 – China Online Revolution

Written by Ten Touch. Posted in Grafio

Hip_iPad_02
Great news, everybody! 11.11.2015 – It’s 11th November! This year Grafio joins China’s Online Shop-a-ton!

The largest online shopping day in China is already here and we are ready with an irresistible promo offer – just $3.99 !!! You don’t want to miss this awesome gift! Viva la revolucion! 🙂

网上购物革命! *只限一天, 限時優惠至11/11 11:59pm

app-store-59a5d30dc366f66c1bcc556573b9f19b

06 Nov 2015

What is Ingress and how it can benefit you?

Written by Ivelin Georgiev. Posted in Grafio

What is Ingress?

Ingress is location-based augmented reality game for iOS and Android. With interesting and long story behind it. During 2012 researchers in CERN discover that the Earth was seeded with “Exotic Matter”, or XM. This substance has been associated with the Shapers, a mysterious phenomenon or alien race which is neither described nor seen.

Тwo factions emerge after this, The Enlightened who believe that their actions will lead the humanity next chapter in it’s evolution and The Resistance who believes that it’s protecting the humanity from Shapers influence.

The game play consists of capturing “portals” at places of cultural significance or historical sites, for example: public art, landmarks, monuments, etc., by deploying resonators at neutral (white/gray) or friendly portals, or using Bursters to take down enemy portals.

How to play is out of the scope of this post, but if you choose to install the game you will be presented with short tutorial.

TL;DR: It’s giant game of Capture the Flag 🙂

Why I play Ingress?

Continue reading “What is Ingress and how it can benefit you?”

04 Nov 2015

Designing software using Grafio

Written by Vasil Botev. Posted in Grafio

Imagine that you are standing in front of a complex assignment to develop software from scratch. It is both creative and optimizational task. You have to decide how to structure your code, classes and libraries in order to achieve the desired functionality.

It is scientifically proven, that making diagrams helps you make such decisions. If you have visual plan of what you want to do, you will do it with less efforts. It turns out that Grafio is great toll for this kind of task. It lets you do your initial planning and also creates beautiful output, witch can be used in your documentation or even for presentation purposes. It gives you editable overview of your master plan and can cover different aspects of the software development process.

Class hierarchy

When it comes to class hierarchy things might be obvious – you have to create certain number of classes, each with certain properties. This could become really messy really fast. The more the number of classes and properties grows the more you need graphical representation, especially when you have complicated parent/child relations. You can describe your classes structure very easy – each class as shape with text with its children and their properties.

Views hierarchy

You will face similar problems when you start to design your user interface. Grafio is priceless tool for designing your user interface hierarchy. You can draw your entire user experience within one Grafio document. The diagram may include the number of windows and views, their sub views, user interface elements, user prompts and so on.


ux

Continue reading “Designing software using Grafio”

03 Nov 2015

Watch 9 Cool Stories Told with Vidra

Written by Ten Touch. Posted in Vidra

Vidra allows you to draw, add images search 100,000 icons record your voice and add background music. The limits to what you can make with Vidra are only your imagination 🙂 You’ve probably wondered “How to create a YouTube video?”. Or what about “How to make a YouTube video on your iPad?”. With Vidra it has never been easier. It’s actually so easy a large percentage of our users are three year olds 😀

Here are some examples of stories told with Vidra:

Motivation Videos

Continue reading “Watch 9 Cool Stories Told with Vidra”