I’m doing some work at a client’s where I needed access to a drawing tool and didn’t have a PC with Visio on it.

I’ve searched for online drawing tools before without much success but optimistically thought I’d try again. Reasonably near the top of the list was Gliffy which I thought I’d give a try.

So far (and it’s only been a few hours) I’m really pleased with it as it’s really easy to use and has done reasonable ER and UML sequence diagrams. I actually think it’s more pleasant to use than Visio (not difficult) but admittedly doesn’t have a lot of its features.

It’s not free but the single user licence is $5 a month, so not too expensive.

I reckon it’s a viable alternative to Visio for general diagramming (you couldn’t use for wireframes) and probably worth it for ease of use and portability. I’m going to try using it for all diagrams over the next month to see whether the theory pans out.