
Show HN: MindIT – A web based Freemind alternative built in Meteor - sidcool
http://www.mindit.xyz/
======
sidcool
The next release has the following features upcoming.

1\. A better and snappy UI.

2\. Closer resemblance to FreeMind in terms of working with multiple nodes,
look and feel etc.

3\. Log in system to save and share mind-maps.

4\. Dashboard for logged in users with cool features.

5\. Android and iOS apps.

6\. Cool animations.

The team is very excited about the feedback and response. Keep it coming!

~~~
3dfan
Heya!

1) How does it work? When I click on "Create Mindmap", I get an empty page
with a grey elipse on it with the words "New Mindmap". When I click that, I
can change the text. Thats all. How do I create a Mindmap?

2) Who are you? What is your background? What do the 20 people on the "About
Us" page do? It seems like a pretty big team.

3) How will you monetize it?

~~~
sidcool
Howdy 3dfan,

1\. It uses keyboard shortcuts for now. TAB will add a child, while ENTER will
add a sibling. For the complete list of shortcuts click on the 'Help' link on
top right.

2\. We are developers and it is being developed by freshers as a passion
project. We really love creating things. It's a big team, righto, but many
work on the product part time.

3\. We have no plans monetizing it in the near future. We created
[http://ideaboardz.com](http://ideaboardz.com) earlier for the fun of it, and
it's been received quite well. That's our reward.

------
creamyhorror
I rely on Freeplane (leading fork of Freemind) to store almost all my notes
and knowledge, it's really great for my purposes (better than having hundreds
of text files). A diffing, web version of Freeplane would be great, because I
really miss multi-client syncing and access-on-the-go features.

I'm guessing this app, while cool, won't really fill that need, since it's
merely compatible with Freemind. Unless it grows into a full platform to
essentially replace Freemind (which is a possible way to go).

Still, good job on building a Freemind-compatible app!

~~~
adzicg
mindmup does diffing and version control nicely (the format is JSON) and it's
web based, multi-client.
[http://discover.mindmup.com/geeks](http://discover.mindmup.com/geeks)

~~~
sidcool
An awesome feature idea. Added to backlog! Thanks.

------
lawpoop
One feature I've looked for is "completely" nested mind-maps. What I mean is
that when I click on a node, I want the outer mind map to completely disappear
as I zoom into the clicked node as an entirely new, nested mind-map. Even with
collapsing, traditional mind-maps have too much information overload for me.

------
skimmas
I was once a fan of mind maps but then stoped using them. I guess my mind
evolved to some other way of organization but I always tought this kind of
tool could be interesting. One thing though mind maps almost always make me
grind my teeth is how most applications Have such poor defaults in terms of
aestethics.

~~~
sidcool
I agree with you that the look and feel are not the best, but the app is under
heavy development and the UI is going to improve in leaps and bounds. Stay
tuned!

------
nacnud
Seems to say "Loading.." indefinitely. (Probably because I'm behind a corp
firewall/proxy)

~~~
sidcool
I think that's coz of the load of being on HN front page.

------
sidcool
A new release just made. Features:

1\. Undo/Redo 2\. Actions on multiple nodes.

------
thenomad
A bit minimal for my needs but a cool start.

Unless I missed it, there doesn't seem to be a way to drag items around - I
tend to use visual arrangement in my mindmaps quite a bit.

~~~
sidcool
It's scrollable both vertically and horizontally (as your mindmap expands)

But adding draggable elements makes sense. Noted.

Thanks for your feedback.

------
_Rex
I like the fact that it's online, but I won't ditch Freemind until you
replicate their notes feature. Also, does it support simultaneous editing?

~~~
sidcool
It does! Meteor gives that out of the box.

------
MegaLeon
Nice, I am developing some stuff to learn Meteor as well. What would you say
be the biggest challenge you had while developing this was and how did you
solve it?

~~~
sidcool
In fact, that warrants a dedicated blog posts on the team's experience with
Meteor. Will post it soon.

------
ArekDymalski
Congratulations on shipping your app. Did you consider developing smartphone-
friendly version.

I dream about usable mindmapping app for ~5" touchscreens :)

~~~
sidcool
An Android and iOS app is being built right now as we speak. Will post an
update.

------
sidcool
Any feedback will help the team make it better. I have listed high level
features in another comment here.

------
clishem
The lack of 'fork me on GitHub' button is unfortunete. Will this be open
sourced?

~~~
sidcool
You bet it will be open sourced once we are in a good shape. We also created
an app a while ago called [http://ideaboardz.com](http://ideaboardz.com) the
source code of which is open.

------
cpplinuxdude
Meteor fan here (new convert). Why build something that already exists, just
by curiosity?

~~~
dsp1234
Not the author, but a couple of reasons that seem likely:

1.) To learn how to build a non-toy application in Meteor

2.) Freemind is a desktop Java application, so having this be web based means
it's available to more platforms.

~~~
sidcool
Very accurate, these and some more reasons stated above.

------
sidcool
Features:

1\. Supports all shortcuts of Freemind.

2\. Can import Freemind created Mind Maps.

3\. Can export Freemind supported Mind Maps.

4\. Cool tool.

~~~
cpplinuxdude
Would you like a foot-rub with that sir? :)

~~~
sidcool
If that pleases the users ;)

------
elsen
Nice, the help image could be smaller to fit on the screen.

~~~
sidcool
Noted, will relay the information to the dev team.

