viziblr

Lots of interesting Visio-related news this week.

Visio team's blog has moved

First, the Visio blog is moving from Visio Insights (an MSDN blog) to Visio Blog (an office blog).

URL for the new blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visio/

Visio 2013 Preview was Announced and Released

The official announcement was here and you can download the preview from here

The release was covered in several places

• John Goldsmith's visLog
• bVisual

A Visual Tour

The Visio team will blog about the new features, but in the meanwhile, I've installed it and assembled some screenshots and samples so you can explore the preview without actually installing it.

Keep in mind I am running on Windows 8 Release Preview, so there may be a few difference in what you experience on Windows 7.

Start Menu and Icons

Launching Visio

Let's open the Welcome to Visio template.

Notice the pin icon.

Now I see a preview of the template:

Then click Create

The drawing opens up like this

By the way, ignore the POWER TOOLS tab in the ribbon, that's an Add-In I created and not part of Visio.

The Ribbon

Home

Insert

Design

Data

Process

Review

View

Developer

Timeline

RIGHT CLICK ON SHAPE

FORMAT SHAPE

This is amazing. Click on Format Shape and you'll see this pop up on the right.

Expand the options …

Let's check out Gradient Fill

Oh my. We're about to get taken to a dream world of magic

And hey, what is this Gradient Line option?

EFFECTS?

What is this strange icon I've never seen before …

This can't be happening.

Welcome to the New Visio indeed