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Introduction

Over the last two weeks I decided to go for one of my ideas and implement a simple concept editor.

It’s online, you can try it here (requires Silverlight), and of course, Feedback is greatly appreciated. If you have trouble using it, come back here, and I’ll show you how it works.

Motivation

My main motivation was to create bezier connectors that can be bent by direct manipulation in a way so that it would feel more “natural”. I hope I’ve succeeded, please tell me if not.

Storage Concept

LightConcept allows you to create a graph. The Silverlight application stores the graph on your hard drive in your user account, no one else can see or edit the graph.

When you visit the site again later, your graph appears again, independent of the Browser you use. Right now, only one graph can be stored per user account.

If the browser or the application crashes, the last 30 seconds of your changes may be lost, but not more. LightConcept tries to get around the typical load / save scenarios. It may support graph export and import in a later version.

Documentation

To add a new node: Just click once somewhere on the background. You can now type to enter the label.

To edit a label. Click in in the middle of a node.

To move a node. Press the left mouse button over a node and drag it.

To delete a node, click the (+) and select “Delete Node” from the menu.

To connect two nodes, hover over the first node, press the (+) and drag it to the other node. Alternatively, you can release the mouse button over the background to create a new, connected node.

To bend a connector, hover over a curve, and when it appears in orange, drag the curve like you want it.

To delete a connector, click it and select “Delete Connector” from the menu. The menu also offers a “Straighten” option to convert the curve back to a line.

To move the workspace, press the left mouse button on the background and move the mouse.

Keyboard Shortcuts

When node is selected (has a black border), you can press “Del” to delete it.

The Next Iteration

There are a number of features already requested by my friends, here are some of them:

• Single left clicks on the background should not immediately create nodes (that’s more of a usability bug).
• Support an Out Of Browser Installation.
• Labels on connectors (e.g. to model state machines).
• Workspace zooming using the mouse wheel.
• Colored nodes.
• Multi selection.
• Undo / Redo.

Please vote on these or your ideas on the feedback site.

And now… have fun bending :)