MindNode Pro 1.2 BETA 1
Warning: The following version is beta software. This means that this version is unstable and may cause data loss!
MindNode Pro 1.2 required a major code rewrite which might have introduced several new bugs. I tested this version very carefully and I’d like to ask you to send me any issues you encounter during your tests. I’m especially interested in feedback related to cross connections. Thank you for your help improving my application!
Change Log
Cross Connections
Cross Connections allow the user to visualize a connection between any two nodes on the canvas. You can create a new connection by selecting two nodes and choosing create connection from the main menu or by shift-clicking on a node and dragging a line to a second node. MindNode Pro supports importing and exporting connections from/to FreeMind. All other formats currently don’t support this new feature.
Fullscreen Mode
Focus is critical when brain storming and sometimes even the smallest things can break concentration. Via the main menu you can now enable a clean fullscreen mode.
Contextual Menus
Context menus allow to access the most important functionally directly on the canvas. Currently contextual menus are supported for the canvas, nodes and connections.
Other Improvements and Fixes:
- Solved an issue related to displaying the wrong link type in the inspector.
- Fixes a bug that caused “node wells” to stay visible although the mouse was nowhere near it.
- Bug that caused nodes to stay in edit mode when quickly creating a new one.
- New nodes are now created centered under the mouse cursor.
- Fixes an issue related to incorrect selection of the inspector dash style menu.
- Allow to detach nodes by pressing “d” during dragging.
- Improvements to menu item validation.
- Allow to reorder nodes when there is no active selection.
- Fixes several bugs when importing FreeMind documents.
- New acknowledgement menu.
Warning: The following version is beta software. This means that this version is unstable and may cause data loss!
[Update]
Known Issues:
- Crash when pasting a node.
April 14th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Markus: I tried the beta and focused on the new features. Everything seems to work as expected. I particularly like the connections between nodes and the contextual menus. I think the flexibility to select the arrow heads for both ends is a very good idea as well as being able to change the color and the arc of the connection line.
I switched from Freemind to Mindnode Pro because it allows much better control of the appearance of the mindmap. I like the way you can use the inspector to turn a node into a filled box. I also like the control over other format features that the Inspector provides (such as color and line thickness).
I was just starting to play with the Freemind beta’s “attribute” capabilities, which seemed useful if you are using a mindmap as a visual database. It seems a useful feature but perhaps somewhat tangent to the main purpose of a mindmap. I’d be happy if someday you implemented something along these lines, but i doubt if it would be your highest priority.
Thanks for creating such excellent software!
Harvey Levine
Harvey
April 14th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Dear Harvey.
Thank you for testing this version.
I’m not aware of this new “attribute” Freemind feature. I’ll have a look at it. Thank you for pointing it out.
Cheers!
Markus
April 15th, 2009 at 7:21 am
I’ll be happily testing this once my MacBook gets fixed, thanks for creating this… other mindmappers are servicable but this one is sublime…. is iPhone 3G support in 1.2?
April 15th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
The beta looks great Markus. I love the cross connections. I see a little “sharing” preference – is this indicative of some mobile interface? That would be fantastic!
BTW: I can confirm the paste crash. Any other big issues that you’re grappling with?
April 15th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Kenneth:
There is test code for iPhone sharing in there, but I’m not sure if I’ll enable it in the final release. I’m still not sure how I should handle exporting and importing, because the iPhone can only support a subset of features. My current plan is to release a freeware viewer first.
Charlie:
I’m not sure if this preference will stay. I’m playing around with different things at the moment, but there will be support for Apple touch screen device in the near future.
There are currently no other major issues I’m aware of. I’d like to change the way I handle the waypoint when moving a node and I just changed the way I draw arrows.
Cheers!
Markus
April 15th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
I view PDF exports on the iPhone now with print to PDF coupled with DropBox (an amazing service, http://www.getdropbox.com/). It’s a little tough to view a large map because you can only enlarge the PDF so far, but it works pretty nicely for viewing. I’m not sure that editing/creating a mind map on the iPhone would be fast enough. One of the things I really like about MindNode is the intuitive/quick interface. It allows the technology to take a back seat to the actual brainstorming.
April 16th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Dear Charlie.
Yes, the speed is an issue on the iPhone/iPod. From my experience the ability to write down an idea on the go is the big advantage of a mobile version.
Markus
April 17th, 2009 at 6:51 am
Hi Markus,
nice work, mind if I post some ideas for improvement?
Context menus: Please disable (grey out) those entries that do not make sense e.g., unfold for a node that hasn’t been folded. Also, the node context menu has too much separators for my taste which make the menu appear a bit too discomposed, maybe you could consider moving “select all” in the same group as the clipboard commands (like Pages does) or remove it alltogether.
Inspector: while there are too many groups in the context menu, there are too little in the node inspector :-) I think, separators between the headlines and between “color” and the arrow type selectors would help. The spacing between “Ausrichtung” and the alignment buttons is too narrow (don’t know if this is caused by the longer German word or if the English version has the same spacing)
One last thing: the Color dialog only colorizes the tree lines, not cross connections. To do that, I have to select the cross connection, open the Node inspector, click on the color and _then_ choose the cross connection’s color.
Cheers, Andreas
April 17th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Dear Andreas.
Thank you for your suggestions:
-Contextual menu validation: I already disable some of the items, but I’ll try to add validation for the folding commands too.
-Contextual menu select all: Good idea. I’ll move it into this group.
- Inspector: I actually like the spacing and from what I can tell they have the correct values. The spacing between “Ausrichtung” and the segment control was a localization issue. I redesigned this part to make it easier to localize.
-Color: This is a bug. I’ll fix it.
Great feedback! Thank you!
Cheers!
Markus
April 21st, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Just noticed that when a ‘fontbug’. This is what I did: Created new node. Deleted text so I had an empty node. Than I started typing and instead of my default font/fontsize it was Helvetica 12
April 21st, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Dear Christian.
I think I’m able to reproduce this bug. I created a main node, deleted the text, left the edit mode, went back into edit mode and started entering text.
Thank you for pointing this out. I’ll make sure to fix this bug!
Cheers!
Markus
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:04 am
This is my first touch of mind-mapping app on Mac. I tried many other named suggestions and turn out choose MindNode, since the smooth graphic and motion really helps me to think and get concentrate! Thanks so much for the effort you put to develop this simple but great tool.
BTW, when will be the releasing day?
:)
April 23rd, 2009 at 4:36 pm
I am very keen on the new connections.
Any chance you’d be able to enable a short annotation? I’m thinking that the line indicating a connection is powerful, but would be even more powerful if one could make a short note about the connection.
Impossible?
Thanks for such fine work. I look forward to final release.
April 23rd, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Dear Giacomo.
I’ve plans to add this feature. In fact I already added it to the file format so I won’t have to make changes in this area, but at the moment I can’t promise when I’ll add it.
Markus
April 23rd, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Dear DanLau,
I have no idea. Basically I’m ready for release. I updated the localization and the documentation. But I still don’t like the way the waypoint adjusts when moving a node. I want to change this, but sadly it is giving me a hard time.
Markus
April 23rd, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Markus, You are quick!
I realize that there is a way to ‘annotate’ connections already: add a new Main Node and connect it to each of the two nodes being connected,then you can use it to hold comments about the connection. Maybe not orthodox but it works.