diagrams.net (previously draw.io) is a

free and open source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

cross-platform

graph drawing Graph drawing is an area of mathematics and computer science combining methods from geometric graph theory and information visualization to derive two-dimensional depictions of graph (discrete mathematics), graphs arising from applications such a ...

software developed in HTML5 and

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

. Its interface can be used to create diagrams such as

flowcharts A flowchart is a type of diagram that represents a workflow or process. A flowchart can also be defined as a diagrammatic representation of an algorithm, a step-by-step approach to solving a task. The flowchart shows the steps as boxes of va ...

, wireframes, UML diagrams, organizational charts, and network diagrams. diagrams.net is available as online as cross-browser web app, and as offline desktop application for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Its offline application is built using the

Electron The electron ( or ) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no kn ...

framework. The web app does not require online login or registration and can open from and save to the local

hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

. Supported storage and export formats to download include PNG, JPEG, SVG, and PDF. It also integrates with

cloud services Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed computing, ...

for storage including Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive,

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

, and GitLab.com. It is also available as plugin to embed the web app in platforms such as

NextCloud Nextcloud is a suite of client-server software for creating and using file hosting services. Nextcloud provides functionally similar to Dropbox, Office 365 or Google Drive when used with integrated office suite solutions Collabora Online or Only ...

MediaWiki MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for MediaWiki ...

Notion Notion or Notions may refer to: Software * Notion (music software), a music composition and performance program * Notion (productivity software), a note-taking and project-management program from Notion Labs Inc. * Notion (window manager), the s ...

, Atlassian Confluence, and Jira. It has been described by tech reviewers such as TechRadar and PCMag as an alternative to Lucidchart, Microsoft Visio, and SmartDraw.

History

JGraph Ltd

JGraph Ltd is a

private limited company A private limited company is any type of business entity in "private" ownership used in many jurisdictions, in contrast to a publicly listed company, with some differences from country to country. Examples include the '' LLC'' in the United Sta ...

founded by Gaudenz Alder and David Benson in

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from ...

in the United Kingdom.

JGraph

JGraph started as a pure

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

language software project by Gaudenz Alder and as a University project in 2000 at

ETH Zurich (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , ac ...

, Switzerland. The initial public release of JGraph 1.0 was in May 2002. The original design for JGraph was to make it an architectural extension of the

Swing Swing or swinging may refer to: Apparatus * Swing (seat), a hanging seat that swings back and forth * Pendulum, an object that swings * Russian swing, a swing-like circus apparatus * Sex swing, a type of harness for sexual intercourse * Swing rid ...

Java-toolkit and its JTree class.

mxGraph

In 2005, development began on mxGraph, which is a

software library In computer science, a library is a collection of non-volatile resources used by computer programs, often for software development. These may include configuration data, documentation, help data, message templates, pre-written code and subr ...

written in

using HTML5 and SVG technologies. The project was publicly released in 2006, and supported Firefox 1.5 and

Internet Explorer 5.5 Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 (IE5) is a graphical web browser, the fifth version of Internet Explorer, the successor to Internet Explorer 4 and one of the main participants of the first Browser wars, browser war. Its distribution methods and Wi ...

. mxGraph was originally made available as

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...

through a hosted demo of the software for online use, with publicly available source under a end-user license agreement for non-commercial use with the option to purchse a commercial license. In 2009, mxGraph was

open sourced Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open ...

under the Apache license. JGraph also bundled official ports of mxGraph in other languages including Java, C#, and

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group ...

JGraphX

After the final JGraph 5.x release in February 2010, the project renamed its Java-language application to JGraphX, integrated the mxGraph library, and took on mxGraph's version numbering, starting with JGraphX 1.10.0.5 released in 2012.

Diagramly

In 2011, the company started publishing its hosted service for the mxGraph web application under a separate brand, Diagramly with the domain "diagram.ly". After removing the remaining use of

Java applets Java applets were small applications written in the Java programming language, or another programming language that compiles to Java bytecode, and delivered to users in the form of Java bytecode. The user launched the Java applet from a ...

from its web app, the service rebranded as draw.io in 2012 because the " .io suffix is a lot cooler than

.ly .ly is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Libya. Registration A .ly registration is the process of registering a user domain name within the ccTLD for Libya. The .ly domain, introduced in 1997,

", said co-founder David Benson in a 2012 interview. In February 2020, the company announced on its blog that the hosted version of the web application would move from "draw.io" to the "diagrams.net" domain, citing security reasons. The move was completed a month later. The software library, file format, and integrated services remain branded as "drawio".

References

External links

* *
Java API for working with Drawio diagrams
Java (programming language) libraries Free data visualization software Data visualization software Diagramming software Windows software {{Mindmaps