
Draw.io releases open source desktop versions - davidjgraph
https://www.facebook.com/drawioapp/posts/1628618103829386
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sm4sp
For someone who uses Draw.io a whole lot at work this is great news

Since it's an electron app, I suspect there's going to be the flak about the
memory usage.

But at the end of the day, these electron apps are fulfilling the need of
users who enjoy desktop experiences of their essential web apps

~~~
davidjgraph
We're looking at about 60MB on macOS for a small diagram. Another thread
reports Win asking for 175MB.

But as you say, it was electron or nothing for us, no way we can justify
native apps.

~~~
codefined
Using ~110MB for me on Windows. Considering you can get 8GB of RAM for
~£54[0], running this application is costing me roughly 61p worth of RAM when
open. Or, looking at it a different way, on a modest system I can run 720
versions of this program.

Honestly in an age where memory is so cheap I'd much rather have an Electron
app for every conceivable thing (which take a fraction of the time to create)
as opposed to fully fledged applications that only do a few things.

E: Having the tab open in Chrome appears to use more memory for me[0], perhaps
because of the extensions I use?

[0] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/HyperX-FURY-DDR3-Memory-
Module/dp/B...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/HyperX-FURY-DDR3-Memory-
Module/dp/B00J8E92M6)

[1] [https://puu.sh/xbNzL/503e54735e.png](https://puu.sh/xbNzL/503e54735e.png)

~~~
maccard
Every time electron apps come up, I bring up slack. It's currently using 1.3GB
on my machine. I've got Spotify open too, with another 800MB. Adding another
8GB is easy at the lower levels, but I've got 32GB of ram in this machine, and
regularly have to kill slack and spotify when compiling to get back 2-3GB.

~~~
andai
Does anyone know if there are any lightweight alternatives to Electron in the
works? Or if such an idea even makes sense?

~~~
virmundi
There are a few options.

[http://alternativeto.net/software/electron/](http://alternativeto.net/software/electron/)

One thing about these is that Electron can be optimized. I believe that one of
the Visual Studio tools uses it and has dramatically lower memory than slack.
Slack just doesn't try to improve performance.

~~~
noloblo
Like to see Alternatives to electron as well - even super optimized electron
on code Atom and Google Chrome are quite heavy on a MacBook Air

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rayalez
Oh, this is absolutely incredible!

Draw.io is definitely in the top 10 of the most useful apps I've ever
encountered. I'm constantly using it to illustrate my blog posts and videos,
for mindmapping, for drawing diagrams that help me to understand some new idea
I'm learning about(like React/Redux or Docker). And for website mockups of
course.

If you haven't used it yet - I highly recommend it!

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phasecode
For those wondering, it's draw.io wrapped in an electron app.

~~~
sjmulder
At ~175 MB with a blank drawing open, I've seen worse.

Some things I noticed about the menus (on Windows):

\- The menus don't have hotkey support (Alt+…)

\- The File menu is missing a Close option

\- Submenus swich too soon on diagonal mouse movement

I'd suggest switching to native Windows menus. From other Electorn apps it
seems this should be possible. I'm sure a way can be found to make the menu
search feature work, too.

Another small note: on Windows, the close confirmation has the newer multi-
option layout, the same you'd get when overwriting files in Explorer, but it
only has an option to save changes. There is a cancel button, but that should
really be an option.

Edit: memory measured with:

    
    
        Get-Process -Name "draw.io" | %{$_.PM} | Measure-Object -Sum
    

I don't know if that's the right way to go about it.

~~~
davidjgraph
Good feedback, thanks.

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TAForObvReasons
Repo source: [https://github.com/jgraph/drawio-
desktop](https://github.com/jgraph/drawio-desktop)

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go_prodev
For those worried about the electron memory usage, I'd recommend yEd from
yworks.com. I've used it as a portable app at home and work and it's full
featured and small.

~~~
davidjgraph
I just ran up yEd on my MacBook, 240MB with a blank editor. draw.io Desktop is
taking 60MB. Do you have other figures?

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shock
I wish there was a desktop app that allowed me to draw diagrams in "vector"
ascii art that I could then process with `dia` or another similar program to
produce images.

~~~
bump-ladel
Not exactly what you want, but macOS users can use the brilliant Monodraw to
create ASCII images.

[https://monodraw.helftone.com](https://monodraw.helftone.com)

~~~
hood_syntax
Damn, that's really cool. Wish it wasn't mac only :(

~~~
abtinf
There are a number of alternatives, some of which are outlined here:
[https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/126630/creating-
dia...](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/126630/creating-diagrams-in-
ascii)

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eggpy
Does anyone have reasons why I might choose Draw.io over Gliffy? One major
reason I use Gliffy is for Confluence integration at work, but I'm not opposed
to using another tool and uploading the images if it is better.

~~~
davidjgraph
[https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.mxgraph.conflu...](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.mxgraph.confluence.plugins.diagramly/server/overview)

The key driver for the way we approach draw.io is the trust issue that all
SaaS apps suffer from. Not only do they have your data, they have the app as
well.

We always followed the approach of never store user data. On the app side of
things, open sourcing the codebase went part of the way, but you'd still have
to be technical enough to serve the app.

The Desktop versions are critical in that regard, you know you've got a tool
that can't be taken away that will always open your diagrams (which you
control the storage of).

You don't hear SaaS providers talking about this, because giving up control
means lower profits, less chance of an IPO.

~~~
eggpy
Awesome, thanks for the response!

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Sacho
How does draw.io compare to yEd?

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victormustar
What I really need is an open source alternative to Sketch app (in electron?)

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zero_
[https://www.designer.io](https://www.designer.io) not open source though ...

~~~
andai
Wow that's neat, thanks for sharing!

