My Mind: A new web-based mind map editor

by ondras • 13 years ago

122 54 13 years ago

xutopia• 13 years ago

I love mind maps to organize my thoughts but they fall flat when presenting ideas to others. Too often a mind map is only expressive to people who think exactly like you so don't use them to present... use them to organize only.

aroman2• 13 years ago

This is really impressive, nice work! The ability to export in so many native and useful formats is really awesome as well.

One suggestion: it was not clear to me (until I RTFM'd) that I needed to press the "insert" key to insert a new node. Perhaps a few words of explanation on the homepage would be helpful?

cocoflunchy2• 13 years ago

Agreed, I spent a few minutes looking around and trying to add nodes before I found the help. And then some time looking for an 'insert' key on my keyboard... haven't found it yet ;)

ondras8• 13 years ago

Wow, I never thought that an Insert key is going to be such mystery. It is kind of a standard way of inserting a new node in other mind mapping (desktop) apps...

aroman2• 13 years ago

I guessed (correctly) that on my Macbook Air's keyboard cmd+return is "insert".

robmclarty2• 13 years ago

The interface was a complete mystery to me. I clicked and dragged and hit enter and gave up. I read the manual and discovered the insert key (although I don't have one on my mac laptop) and then used tab. But I need to use my mouse to click on a node and then tab and then back to mouse and tab... seems awkward. Could you make it so i can just click and drag from a node to "pull out" a new node and have that default to have focus so i can just start typing?

With any of these sorts of programs, I think it's good to keep the pen and paper interface in the back of your mind. If it's easier/faster/more intuitive to use pen and paper, I think there's still some work that needs to be done on the interface ;)

ondras8• 13 years ago

The UI is designed (and battle-tested) to be controlled mainly via keyboard. Mouse is mostly useless (but somewhat supported for non-power users).

You definitely shall not toggle mouse/kb in an infinite fashion; stick with the keyboard control instead - use arrow keys for navigating around.

noiv• 13 years ago

Using insert for childs, enter for siblings and arrows to navigate seems kind of a standard among mind maps. I had no problem at all. Using the mouse only slows down the mind to map process.

sixothree• 13 years ago

Or better yet, have the default map an explanation of how to get around the interface.

staticshock• 13 years ago

For a more austere mind mapping alternative, I highly recommend http://workflowy.com

calinet6• 13 years ago

I feel there's a ton of opportunity here in personal thought management that hasn't had a killer UI yet. It's possible to get it just right, but would take an incredible design. Workflowy is the closest I've seen.

heliodor• 13 years ago

Integrating Workflowy, Trello, and mindmaps would produce a better, more useful, and more complete tool.

All three use the same data structure (lists) and present it in three different ways. These three data UIs excel in different ways at input, editing, and output and are most appropriate for different tasks.

A couple of ideas for example: Workflowy is a better way to generate a mindmap, so how about a mindmap that allows you to enter your text in Workflowy style on the left half of the screen and shows you the mindmap on the right side of the screen? How about taking a node in Workflowy and allowing the user to interact with it through a Trello-style UI?

bitcuration• 13 years ago

Exactly what I was looking for. Awesome work.

cjfont4• 13 years ago

Fantastic work, I've been using Freemind up to now and I haven't been able to find something web-based that is comparable until now.

philk10• 13 years ago

Have you looked at MindMup? http://www.mindmup.com

cjfont4• 13 years ago

Nope, I wasn't aware it existed. At first glance it looks very useful, although I don't think I'm a fan of the bubbly look and the spider leg edges (my maps tend to be fairly large, so I suppose I like a more compressed look).

desireco422• 13 years ago

Thanks, I also was not aware of it. It is a shame that some really good sites are not promoted and us who might be interested don't even know about it's existence.

pwpwp• 13 years ago

Please turn on the help pane by default. I tried creating a new node for 2 minutes with various gestures.

I don't think many people know where to find the insert key on their keyboard.

cjfont4• 13 years ago

In Freemind it's the tab key, which is both intuitive and easy to find.

ondras8• 13 years ago

Tab added five minutes ago :)

jimktrains2• 13 years ago

I don't think it's so much that as that the insert key isn't used much, so it's a non-obvious choice. Honestly, any keyboard actions aren't obvious since I feel it's a mouse-based ui (less typing text, of course).

ondras8• 13 years ago

Added "Tab" as well.

arunc• 13 years ago

Wonderful!! I wish I could export to FreePlane format as well.

ondras8• 13 years ago

Please submit this feature request to GitHub's issue tracker...

desireco422• 13 years ago

This is really impressive work and thank you for making it open source. I played with it, I get it is early, so I was plesantly suprised with how many things worked. I obviously miss folding, but no biggie :).

ap22213• 13 years ago

I have seen people using (or pushing) mind maps occasionally. I never got it though. How is it better or different than a tabbed outline? Is it the distance between nodes that matters? Is it because outlines are too vertical?

RBerenguel• 13 years ago

My own impression (having extensively used mind maps, outlines, and whatnot) is that it depends a lot on the subject at hand and the user. Some people are better wired to use mind maps effectively (I'm not one of these, but I find them handy on occasion) and others fare better with lists (org mode or a notebook for me.)

cdumler• 13 years ago

A mind map is a database for tracking things when you don't know what is going to be tracked and/or how they are going to be related. You start with some central interest and then add pieces that relate. Good mapping software allows you to link relationships between distant relationships, associate minor bits of data, and easily change relationships between nodes.

I once started a job supporting several pieces of software on several servers in a new environment. I took disparate notes on this and that, but it would have been easy to lose specific pieces. So, I created a mind map of (Company Name), created nodes for server names and softwares. Then, I started filling in things for access information, credentials, installed software, useful scripts, etc. Eventually, I got a map of the whole system of a dozen servers, installed software, how they worked (and didn't), etc. I became the go-to guy for those systems because I knew them so well.

d232• 13 years ago

What software did you use? No offense to the creator of this, but this seemed a bit buggy. I love the idea of being able to save easily to a variety of places, like Google Drive, but I would honestly be willing to try it out for a few bucks a month if it was super-intuitive and helped me get more organized. I'd prefer web-based though.

monkeyspaw• 13 years ago

Mind maps don't imply a hierarchy. This change in how a problem is structured can alter how you think about it. (It's basically a different data structure, which makes it easier or harder to perform certain processing on it.)

tunesmith• 13 years ago

Many mind map products do imply a hierarchy, though, specifically because they often do not allow linking a child to multiple parents. While they visually appear to be non-hierarchical, spreading out in multiple directions, they usually are a data structure where each node can have multiple children, but only one parent. This can be represented in an outliner, while a graph data structure cannot.

wmblaettler• 13 years ago

I just got started using MindMeister (http://www.mindmeister.com/), while not open source, it's a nicely polished product.

avighnay• 13 years ago

A very good work! Thank you for making it open source, in general there is a need for several modularized, open source editors (images, vectors, databases, data map, UML & more.) The problem would be a standard look and feel, perhaps it would be great to define a common, standard open source editor UI style guide

mistercow2• 13 years ago

Very cool, although it seems not to load long nodes when importing from FreeMind. That said, I was pretty impressed that I imported a .mm file and had it "just work" (besides the long nodes).

ondras8• 13 years ago

Hi,

would you mind opening an issue (at GitHub) and attaching the problematic .mm file?

mistercow2• 13 years ago

Sure thing. I actually just made a test file, and realized that the problem is long nodes that have HTML formatting, not long nodes.

deodorant• 13 years ago

I like this, and mindmup is impressive too. My problem is that it chokes on my own notes file. If anyone would like to test a stripped down version of freemind, for a terminal, please make contact via my profile. The stripped down version can handle larger files than most other clients that I have tried, I made it after freemind got too sluggish for daily usage.

bbarn• 13 years ago

Collapse and Expand nodes as an option (maybe ctrl-space) would be incredibly useful..

est2• 13 years ago

I am still looking for a DAG based mind map instead of a tree structure. Bonus if the editor could tell me the shortest path between distant nodes, further solve it in a constrained time.

And I always think of nodes first then connections, many mindmap editor force you to create edge first, this drives me mad.

rdmckenzie• 13 years ago

Totally agreed, unfortuantely however this introduces significant constraints in the parent/child/sibling insertion and navigation model.

qvikr2• 13 years ago

The problem though is visualizing a DAG with even 20 nodes becomes super confusing. So you'll end up with a mess and have no idea why those edges are running in every direction. It's not like mindmaps need something new to get more confusing than they already are...

est2• 13 years ago

It seems more like a management or usability problem, but currently we have availability problem.

qvikr2• 13 years ago

also if you're all for analyzing your networks, you might want to try the UCINET social network analysis package (http://www.analytictech.com/)

reactor• 13 years ago

Jakob's Law – “Users spend most of their time on other websites.”

Would be great if you could mention how to insert a new node in the front page itself. Don't expect people to RTFM.

Very good work though.

My Mind: A new web-based mind map editor

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