Our previous posts have discussed some of the great end user features we’ve added to the new Visio. For developers, the new Visio supports programmatic access for many of its new features. The new Visio API contains methods that let developers change shapes and pictures, add comments, duplicate pages, and apply themes.

In this blog post, we will introduce some of the new API by providing brief descriptions about the methods, properties, and objects. We will also see some of them in action using examples.

Visio 2003, 2007 and 2010 all had the same primary Visio Drawing (VSD) file format. For most users, this was great: files could be shared easily between these three versions of Visio. There were, however, some drawbacks. Most notably, the primary format was binary, which limited both the information stored in the file and how easily IT professionals and developers could work with it.

For the new Visio, we introduced an XML-based file format to provide new capabilities in Visio and improve interoperability with other applications. Other benefits of the new file format include a single unified format for end users and developers, smaller file sizes and reduced security concerns. This post provides an overview of our new file format.

Our customers say they spend a lot of time coordinating and communicating with coworkers to get their daily work done. Whether you’re working on a simple illustration or a flowchart documenting an extremely complex process, it’s not uncommon to have to go through multiple revisions, get feedback and work with others to get the details right. That’s why we picked collaboration as an area of focus for the new Visio. In this post, we'll tell you how to collaborate more effectively using the new Visio.

The new Visio pushes the boundaries of what org charts can look like and how easy it is to create them, by providing modern shape styles, automatic photo importing and a host of other improvements.

Let's jump in and explore how you can have more flexibility than ever in creating a professional, engaging and modern organization chart with the new Visio. 

One of the many tools you’ll find in the new Visio to help you make your diagrams look modern and professionally designed is the addition of shape effects. If you’ve used effects like shadow or reflection in PowerPoint you’re already familiar with how effects can add visual impact to a shape. In the new Visio we have added those same shape effects to allow you to make engaging and professional diagrams simply. In this post, we'll describe how to work with the new effects in Visio.

Visio users tend to do one of two things after creating their diagram--share it or present it to others. Both of these scenarios require your diagram to look visually appealing. So, unsurprisingly, one piece of feedback users continually told us was that they wanted to make professional and modern looking diagrams.

This week, we'll give you an overview of the changes we've made to Visio templates and shapes--what we call "content". Ultimately, when you combine Visio's new features with new content, it's easier than ever to produce professional and modern diagrams.

As we started working on the new version of Visio, we heard from you that it should be super-easy and fast to create professional looking diagrams in Visio. To help achieve this goal, we redesigned our themes, and created new formatting options and effects that can be quickly accessed using themes. Each theme also comes with four unique variants, giving you more flexibility to fine-tune your diagrams. If you want even more control, a set of styles is provided for each theme, allowing you to format any individual shape, using professionally designed styles and colors.

In this post, Tucker Hatfield, a Program Manager on the Visio team, shows you how to give us feedback by sending a smile or frown. This same feature is available in all Office Preview products.

Now that the Visio Preview is available, we want to hear what you have to say. You can let us know how you use Visio, what's most useful to you, what you like, and what changes you'd like to see. A big part of what will make the Visio Preview successful is the feedback we'll get from you, so help us make Visio better by sharing your thoughts through the Send-a-Smile feature.

The first time you open Visio you’ll see that it has a new look. The workspace is simpler, cleaner and designed to make sure your diagrams are the most noticeable and important part of the page. The changes go deeper than just the look, though, and this article will go over some of the most noteworthy improvements.

If you don’t yet have the Visio Preview, you can find instructions for getting the preview here so that you can try the changes in Visio out for yourself.

When we started our planning process for this version of Visio, we made it a central goal that it would be easier, faster and more pleasant to create beautiful, professional looking diagrams. To achieve that, we made a host of improvements to the application - far too many for us to cover here. So, for this post, I'll aim to give you an overview of all the changes we made and cover a few of the most highly requested new features. Later posts will cover everything here in much more detail.