New subject: Visio alternative?

17 Oct 2008

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Today's Topics:

Visio alternative? (Yvonne Everett)
Re: Visio alternative? (Srdjan Todorovic)
Re: Visio alternative? (David Reynolds)
Re: Visio alternative? (Wayne Stallwood)
Re: Visio alternative? (Jan T. Kim)

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:34:21 +0100
From: "Yvonne Everett" ye103910@googlemail.com
Subject: [ALUG] Visio alternative?
To: ALUG main@lists.alug.org.uk
Message-ID:
   25b8c930810160734nc7f9e72qf9c722b5ff66d2a0@mail.gmail.com
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Hi
Does anyone know of a good alternative to Visio?  I have some network
diagrams I need to draw up but have had enough of the windoze
applications....
Thanks
You might like to try www.best4c.com . It lets you draw cobweb diagrams 
for networks, UML, general concept maps and the like via your browser. 
You can then make the diagrams available online so that others can view 
them or copy a version to develop further. The interface is very 
smoothly done and results look good.
I've been searching for something like this to use for collaborative 
curriculum development with colleagues at UEA, also for personal 
brainstorming/concept-mapping. I only came accross Best4c ia couple of 
days ago and it is the closest I've found so far- except that when I 
created an account and tried it out none of the diagrams I created would 
save, which is kind of a show stopper. Still good enough for me to try 
again soon though, could have been some latency in new account setup maybe.
For a desktop app there is Cmaptools from http://cmap.ihmc.us/ that I 
have used on and off for a while. Rather resource hungry and insists on 
putting big things into windows profile space which causes problems with 
our odd UEA setup. Pretty intuitive and flexible though when not eating CPU.
Seems crazy that when I want to chuck out ideas and play around linking 
and rearranging them paper is still hard to beat. Surely there is a 
better app somewhere?
Rob
-- 
Rob Grant
Lecturer in Economics
School of Development Studies
University of East Anglia
r.grant@uea.ac.uk
+44(0)1603 592324

Re: [ALUG] Visio alternative?