urasaru

Dot Dot Dot is a collaborative diagramming tool that embraces the messy nature of drawing out a process.

It’s more analogous to paper and pen tools than a fully-featured tool like OmniGraffle or Visio - think how Etherpad compares to Word.

But simplicity doesn’t mean Dot Dot Dot isn’t powerful:

Smart auto-layout tools allow you to focus on entering the diagram, not dragging boxes out from undereach other - click anywhere and start typing to create a new bubble.

Limited shapes and styling let you focus on the flow, not the look. But don’t worry: these default shapes are beautiful, but there’s full css control if you’d prefer to style your own or load a third-party template.

Magic imports - give Dot Dot Dot an outlined document (bullets, numbered, indented) and see a diagram produced.

Plug a feed into Dot Dot Dot to get a diagram that self-updates every time the feed changes

Export your diagram in a multitude of formats - images (you can link these into blog posts, etc), pdf, SVG for editable vector graphics, other graphing tools, outlines, dot files for graphviz, annotated text format with full revisions

But it’s really collaboration features that set Dot Dot Dot apart -

No logins: send someone a link, they can start editing right away

Review contributions using the innovative diagram timeline - Dot Dot Dot knows a layout tweak from a typo correction, and keeps track of changes to the diagram structure in a seperate stream to the formatting. Don’t let copyediting obscure bigger changes - quickly filter your timeline view to show the major diagram structure changes. Or maybe the color tweaks are your focus - choose to see those instead

Flexibility in diagramming approaches. Edit linearly if you think that way: add bubbles as parents, children or siblings of existing features.

But don’t be constrained - a collaborative workshop diagram is unbounded, and so is Dot Dot Dot. You can loop back, add comment bubbles, group bubbles together into neighborhoods, ringfence, box off, sideline, break the diagram apart, create nested sub-diagrams in boxes or links to other diagrams… Go wild.

Multiple authors can add separate items to a diagram simultaneously and join up later - ideal for note taking in a workshop or brainstorming an idea,

More mature diagrams will go through a lot of revisions - responsible contributors might want to leave a little note about their changes. Dot Dot Dot offers a few mechanisms for this: either comment in a bubble as you create it, so others can hover over it later to read them, or in the free-form notes area.

Or, hit the Commit With Comments button to tag your recent contributions with an explanation - the version control-like commit log can be reviewed later for an overview. Excellent transparency for changes. (There’s no need to ‘Commit’ for regular edits, of course - Dot Dot Dot saves incrementally all the time).

Owners and trusted authors can freeze some diagram elements. For example, you might want to get comments on a proposed timeline - draw the timeline and freeze it. Then, all comments and additions are an overlay on this frozen base.  Or freeze your starting point and goals, and let everyone map their way between them.

And there’s a finely configurable RSS feed so anyone can keep track of changes.

See you in diagramming heaven!