
My Mind: A new web-based mind map editor - ondras
https://github.com/ondras/my-mind
======
aroman
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?

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robmclarty
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 ;)

~~~
ondras
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.

~~~
robmclarty
Then I guess my question is this: why is a mostly visual
interface/representation mainly controlled by non-visual means? To me, a mind-
map is _not_ a "power user" tool and is used for organizing loosely understood
ideas in hopes of getting a better grasp on their domain.

IMHO it should be something easy to play with, move things around,
unstructured (in the sense that a user's stream of ideas won't necessarily be
coming into the program in a structured way; the point of the program being to
structure them), and be able to make many corrections and revisions. The goal
of the tool should be to take unorganized thought and mould it into a
comprehensible hierarchy that can be used to communicate ideas to others.

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xutopia
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.

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pwpwp
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.

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

~~~
ondras
Tab added five minutes ago :)

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staticshock
For a more austere mind mapping alternative, I highly recommend
[http://workflowy.com](http://workflowy.com)

~~~
heliodor
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?

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ap22213
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?

~~~
cdumler
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.

~~~
d23
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.

~~~
ondras
Would you mind reporting these bugs to the official GitHub issue tracker? That
would help fixing them and improving the app.

~~~
d23
This actually does seem like a damn useful project. I'll put an issue up for
keyboard problems I noticed. If I have some free time I might try to help out
at some point.

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deodorant
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.

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avighnay
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

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est
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.

~~~
qvikr
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...

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

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desireco42
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 :).

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mistercow
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).

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ondras
Hi,

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

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

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

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reactor
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.

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cjfont
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
Have you looked at MindMup? [http://www.mindmup.com](http://www.mindmup.com)

~~~
desireco42
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.

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cjfont
HN is the closest thing I've found that addresses that -- I still have to wade
through much of the startup stuff which is irrelevant in my case. When I
already know what I'm looking for, using HN search will lead to me to what's
out there 90% of the time.

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bitcuration
Exactly what I was looking for. Awesome work.

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

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

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

