Today we released a major update to OmniGraffle 6 that improves the app’s performance and makes it a stand-up citizen in Yosemite.
But the update adds much more than that. It improves and expands on the Inspector we created in 6.0 by making it completely customizable. Switch between the sidebar, floating inspectors, and palettes—where you can snap off each group to create millions—if I did my math right—of different combinations.
OmniGraffle 6.1 also includes new stroke options, fill effects, and blending modes. Blur, pixelate, magnify content behind objects, and add inner or outer strokes to shapes. The stencil sidebar includes search results straight from Stenciltown. (And if you have any you’ve created, feel free to share them!)
So that’s the update. 6.1 is free, requires OS X v10.10 (Yosemite) and is available now: direct from us and from the Mac App Store.
Sorry for the confusion! Several of the features included in 6.1 are built on technologies that were introduced in Yosemite - those features simply wouldn’t exist if the minimum requirement for 6.1 was Mavericks.
It is true that not all of our customers can use those features yet, but the adoption rate of Apple’s last few OS releases has been very, very fast. We expect the same will happen here - the number of people getting benefit from the features otherwise wouldn’t exist will grow very rapidly.
In the meantime, customers running earlier versions of OS X still can still download and use the 6.0.x releases of OmniGraffle; nothing has been taken away from them. I hope that makes things more understandable; sorry again for the confusion!
I must admit that I’m in agreement here that it’s ridiculous releasing an application that only supports an operating system that Apple only released a few months ago. Many of us are in situations where we need to wait at least 6 months for all the software we run to operate on Apple’s ‘latest/greatest’ operating system.
Much as I admire OS innovations I’m getting fed up of a world where we’re constantly being forced to upgrade our hardware/software on far too regular a basis. When a new OS upgrade is launched it takes 5 or 6 months for the bugs to be ironed out and just when it’s becoming a stable release details of the next OS upgrade is made public and the cycle begins again. :(
It’s great that OmniGroup want to take advantage of Apples latest innovations but most companies don’t risk jumping on upgrade cycles when they appear. This IOSisfication of OS X isn’t fit for purpose. If a developer want’s to release a product upgrade that takes advantage of specific features of a new OS upgrade they should make sure that a version of the software upgrade is available for older OS versions too (a least 2 cycles back to Mountain Lion as we stand) - even if it has to cut back on some of the feature innovations.
I’m with foresme & camflan. I’ve been driving OmniGraffle very hard since 2001 and this is the first time I’ve wanted a downgrade. My productivity depends upon it and it’s nearly useless.
Yeah, i don’t get the “improves the app’s performance” statement either. 6.1 is super slow and I am getting a beach ball just about with anything I do. Particularly the stencil lib is now entirely unusable.
I am sorry Omni, I like the new features … on paper … but the apps is very buggy. I am going to look for something else, even visio through parallels would be MUCH better than this.
Just to add to how omnigraffle is slow for me. Switching from one inspector to the next by means of the little buttons on top, omnigraffle takes about 4 seconds to switch (MBPr 2012, lots of memory free). Interesting thing is if I just poke at the drawing with my mouse and let context switching do the switch over to the relevant inspector, it is much faster. Also on a 2011 iMac, omnigraffle inspector switches are faster (noticeable lag but probably quicker than 1 sec).
In addition, I have quite a few stencils with several of these somewhat complex vector drawings. Scrolling through the stencils is absolutely not practical. Omnigraffle is really struggling to update the display and is busy (rendering ?) for many seconds, making for a rather unpleasant experience. The slowness here is about the same on MBPr and iMac
Is a bug fix release planned? I got more crashes in two weeks than in ten years of intensive usage of Omnigraffle.
I am sending a lot of report, but no reaction (except the automatic acknowledge). Is it really useful to send?
While there’s been some improvements with the latest release, I’ve had it crash on me so many times. Whether it’s been from closing a file, exporting to PDF or aligning objects… you know, basic tasks I’ve gotten crashes. Luckily I haven’t lost much work, it’s just been really frustrating.
Any idea on a fix for this or an upcoming update?
Yes, those crash reports are very useful to send—reviewing those reports is how we track down and fix crashes for the next release. If you could point me at one of your reports, I’d love to investigate whether you’re seeing the same crash over and over or whether you’re encountering independent issues.
Thank you for reporting those details! Inspector-switching performance when a large stencil is open in the Inspector should be much better in Friday’s [test builds of OmniGraffle 6.1.2][1].
From the release notes:
Performance — Improved inspector performance - selecting tabs when a large stencil was open in the stencil inspector was slow.
Also, thanks to everyone who sent in crash reports! Your reports have helped us identify and fix several stability issues:
Stability — Fixed a crash with updating the stlye widget.
Stability — Fixed a crash when using the stamp tool.
Stability — Fixed an issue where an object link which points nowhere would cause a crash when the link’s attributes were displayed in the inspector.
We’re looking to ship a final release of 6.1.2 with these fixes ASAP. Hope this helps!
I forgot to note that we shipped v6.1.2 with those fixes on January 21:
• Performance — Improved the performance of switching between tabs in the inspector.
• Stability — Fixed a crash opening Visio files (.vsd) with a specific connector type and setting.
• Stability — Fixed a crash closing the sheet that shows errors that occur while loading the document.
• Stability — Fixed a hang involved with saving a document multiple times without a pause in-between saves.
• Stability — Fixed a crash with updating the style widget.
• Stability — Fixed a crash when using the stamp tool.
• Stability — Fixed an issue where an object link which points nowhere would cause a crash when the link’s attributes were displayed in the inspector.
Today we shipped v6.1.3 with several more stability fixes:
• Stability — Fixed a crash related to changing screens and closing windows.
• Stability — Fixed a crash encountered when updating the style tray in a background thread while moving lots of shapes at once using the arrow keys.
• Stability — Fixed a crash encountered when tabbing through tables with recently-deleted text.
• Stability — Fixed a data corruption bug related to changing layers or canvases with graphics that have layer or canvas actions.
• Stability — Fixed a crash deleting multiple shared layers at once.
• Stability — Fixed a bug where deleting a layer with actions on other layers that reference that layer can cause the document to load incorrectly.
• Help Menu — Searching the Help menu would sometimes return results from older versions of OmniGraffle if they were still installed on the Mac, even though those help results didn’t apply. Searching the Help menu for something that didn’t exist and then clicking on “No results found” would also cause a crash. Both of these issues have been fixed.
• Option-Drag — Fixed a bug where Option-dragging a shape to duplicate it would always place it in the wrong location when the canvas was zoomed or when rulers were visible.
Thank you all for sending in your crash reports! I believe these releases address most of the crash reports we’ve received since 6.1 shipped, but we’ll continue to monitor and fix issues based on the reports you send us.
Yep, seems more stable and quicker. Thanks, I was starting to doubt there for a moment…
But we have to talk about how the stencil navigator works sometimes… Its navigation logic escapes me and is extremely aggravating. At its outer most indent, it shows all the top nodes and child nodes expanded forming a (mile) long list that has me scrolling forever. For example:
Why not show “Maps” and “Networks and Computers” and all the other nodes collapsed so that the list is much more easy to manage? This is how it seems to work on the iPad version.
everything is great except the stencil navigation. On v5, the navigation is intuitive and fast loading the stencil. I can just using arrow keys up and down to see find the stencil I want in no time with the display stencil below. With v6, I can’t group them, I can’t favorite them. I can’t drag them into the folder. But that is not a big deal. When I’m working with 4-5 stencils. Here is the extra steps I take.
Find the stencil scrolling down. (Oh I don’t remember the name. and imagine when you have a lot of them)
I click on one of the stencil. (Oh, this is not the one)
I click back at the top.
I scroll all the way down from where I just selected to click for the next stencil in the list.
I click on the stencil. (Oh, this is it)
After I use it. (Oh, I need to change to another stencil)
…
This is what I want this back in v6 (split view). Please do so. I am in pain using omni v6. I spend more time finding stencil and going back and forward than I do my design. I just upgraded it. And this is the first thing I consider returning it if this was an actual product that I can bring it back in the store.
Way to go on the pallets, I didn’t upgrade previously from 5 because being locked to a single window was a dealbreaker.
Some issues I’m experiencing:
Loading templates gives me a spinning beach ball for 10 seconds. Bad.
Stencils take to long to load. In 5 I when I hit the button to select one stencil or another they switch and I go on with my work. In 6 I wait each time I switch stencils. Worse, the delay is increased because switching between stencils means hitting the back button and clicking another stencil, and waiting again for it to load. It’s maddening. Im a UX designer and spend a lot of time building out stencil sets for the projects I’m working on as well as utilizing open source sets in combinations. Switching constantly is a way of life, but the current time delay and extra steps make upgrading a non-starter. I should be able to measure productivity DECREASES with an upgraded, supposedly better product.
Still waiting, I’ll upgrade when these issues are fixed and I can be as productive in 6 as I currently am in 5.
I was experiencing issues last week in which any type of cross-document cut/copy and paste froze my machine up and crashed Omnigraffle. A kind individual from the Omnigraffle team ensured me that this update should resolve the issues and he was correct. Thanks a ton.
