XMind

Brainstorming and Mindmapping!

Because of our love of mind mapping, the XMind team came together from different parts of China to create XMind. On April 1^st, 2007, we released the first English version of XMind in Beijing.

To make a better productivity tool, we have a few principles that we adhere to:

• XMind must be very easy to use.
• XMind should increase user productivity with a fun to use interface and powerful functionality.
• XMind should be accessible so that more people can benefit from mind mapping.

Easy-to-use ≠ Simple

Every good tool must be easy to use. But this does not mean simple. In fact, some look-simple tools are not easy to use. Easy-to-use is a design concept that gives people a certain feeling while using a tool.  For example, XMind allows users to create a subtopic with the Tab key. The result is that people can easily mind map with a shortcut keystroke that makes sense. Some users have described this feature as Enter spreads your ideas, and Tab digs one idea. It greatly enhances usability.

The need to focus is very important for building a mind map, especially a big one.  Drilldown provides a perfect solution.  Selecting a topic and clicking F6 brings you into a branch level, where you can focus on the topic for that branch and its associated subtopics.

Navigation is easy too. We can choose to see all topics in a classic style outline viewer or via the diagrammatic Overview viewer. Outline view shows the entire map content in a traditional linear way, which sometimes helps in digesting the map concepts.  BTW, we can directly edit topic content in this viewer. Overview view offers us the flexibility to see and navigate through content on the map. Left-clicking the mouse allows us to move any part of the map into the center. Scrolling the mouse wheel allows us to quickly zoom in or out on the map.

Presentation is an easy task in XMind because of the Presentation Mode.  No matter which topic we are on, clicking F5 will bring us into this special mode. All topics are hidden except the Central Topic, which is at the center and highlighted. Now, by hitting the space key in succession, each main topic is revealed one by one, centered and highlighted instead of the central topic.

In fact, we can pick out more. All of these features, while powerful, were designed with ease of use in mind.

Increasing User Productivity with XMind

When we decided to enter the mind mapping software market, we wanted to provide functionality that was not only easy to use, but fun to use and productivity-enhancing. We didn’t find a mind mapping tool in the market that provided all of these aspects, so we took on this challenge with XMind.

Since releasing XMind, we’ve received lots of positive feedback about the user interface, that it’s pleasing to the eye. We believe having an attractive interface makes work tasks more fun and greatly enhances productivity.

We’ve also received many accolades for our Multiple Sheets functionality within the main view.  Similar to how a spreadsheet workbook allows you to have multiple sheets within that file; we can create multiple sheets within a single XMind file. Searching, finding and navigating content is much easier this way. Instead of having to open and close various files, or follow links and navigate away from a starting point, users can easily click between different sheet tabs for maximum efficiency in perusing various map content.

Other functionality for finding and sharing content within XMind makes it an essential productivity tool.

Finding

If we want to find something in a single map, normally Find and Replace (Ctrl+F) will be good enough. When we have many opened maps, with some having multiple sheets within them, Powerful Search view will be a great assistant. In this viewer, we can search any content in all opened workbooks. The search results are listed as a tree with a clean looking format. We can get to the content we need to find quickly and efficiently.

Sharing

XMind can export map content to other file formats such as Image, PDF (Map), PDF (Document) , HTML, etc., for fast sharing.

XMind also offers another free sharing solution, XMind Share. Suppose you’re a teacher and a mind mapper. You want to share some special class content with your students in a non-public way. Just open the map in XMind and sign-in with your XMind Account (free to set up on www.xmind.net). Click the Upload button on the toolbar, select Unlisted in the privacy controls, and upload the map to XMind Share. This map will be assigned a unique URL, which you can provide to your students so that they can go and read the map online or download it to their own computers. Note that people without the URL will not be able to get to your map and it won’t be searchable in Google.

Making XMind and Mind Mapping Accessible to the World

When we started XMind four years ago, we had the vision of exposing as many people as possible to the power of mind mapping. We believe that XMind Open Source is a great way to achieve this vision.

This open source version of XMind has many features which meet most peoples’ basic mind mapping requirements. More importantly, it incorporates all of the design rules mentioned above, namely easy to use, fun to use, and productivity-enhancing.

Along with XMind Open Source, we also offer XMind Pro, which has more advanced business features such as Presentation mode, Audio notes, TaskInfo view, and Gantt chart viewer. XMind Pro is subscription-based software with a very reasonable entry–level fee.

Remaining true to our principles has gotten some results that we are really proud of. Earlier this year, XMind surpassed the half a million user mark, and our user base continues to grow exponentially as more and more people discover the power of XMind.

Finally, we want to say a big Thank You to all of XMind users who have sent feedback via email or left messages via Twitter, Facebook, and our user forums, or just support us quietly. No matter whether its praise, suggestions, or criticism, your support provides the fuel for the XMind Team to keep working hard and make XMind better and better.

Since XMind was put into the marketplace, we have had many supporters from Germany.  Undoubtly, XMind German version, as a bridge or a link, quickly brings XMind close to our Germany users. This is definitely a key point.

Now we would like to solemnly introduce a nice friend from Germany, Mr. Jens Pipka, a senior consultant for IT Technology and Architecture since more than 15 years, who has done XMind German translation for us voluntarily since 2007. We have had a pleasant cooperation with him. During these years, each time when XMind released a new version,  Mr. Jens Pipka kindly did us a favor for German translation. It’s not a easy thing.  We never met each other. There is a sense of trust between us. We really appreciate for all the effort he has done for XMind these years.

And we also would like to say “Thank you” to all our contributors, who help us to do translations, who help us to figure out the reasons for bugs, who offer suggestions for improvements, who do beta test for us and etc. It’s our great honor to have such nice users. Thank you all!

Now XMind new version is around the corner, with your help, therefore, XMind could have this stable and wide development.

Recently, we received an email from our friend Marcin Wudarczyk, CEO of NG Logic, a Warsaw located company. He told us they have almost finished the development of XMindlook, a xmind plugin. This is a very good news. XMindlook is focusing on “Empower your mind map” via Keeping tasks synchronized at all times transparently between MS Outlook and XMind.

After using a few weeks, I think XMindlook is worth for you to take a try, and want to share some my usages:

The first one is about the installment. Please download XMindlook.exe and install xmindlook.exe to the XMind installation folder. If you are using the XMind Portable version, please install xmindlook to “Commons” folder.

When you finish the installment, and launch XMind. You can find that XMindlook has created a new menu named XMindlook, a “XMindlook Registration” under help menu, two toolbar buttons, a new XMindlook page in preferences dialog, and three views in your XMind.

The third point is about the function of these views.

• Categories view is used to add/delete/move/modify the categories and category groups.
• Outlook task view is used to import/export tasks from outlook, sync the tasks with same name, and show unfinished tasks.
• Taskinfo view is used to set the details of every task.

The forth point is XMindlook is not free($49.00), but you can free try 30 days. And it works well with XMind/XMind Pro and MS Outlook 2003/2007/2010.

And Mr Marcin also told us: “I am a heavy user od mind maps and GTD, so the product was made also to satisfy my own needs. This is our first XMind plugin, but hopefully,if you will like it, it will not be the last one. I will be happy to listen to the commuity feedback and continously improve our product to suit your needs, not only mine;) Our goal is to further extend XMind to make it wide-use and feature-rich mind mapping platform.”

At last, I want to say thank you, Mr Marcin. And we hope to see more plugins developed by the third party, no matter simple or big, free or paid. You are welcome!

One of our best friends, an XMind Pro daily user from South Africa, reminds that XMind not only can organize our ideas but all our work as well, for example, manage all your files in Project Management.

This friend told us that, most of time, he was drowned in numerous files, notes, spreadsheets, quotes, web links. Until one day, he found XMind can be used to manage all these files. Most people just think of mind maps as a way of organizing sparkles or ideas. However, XMind, as a mind mapping software, indeed, can help us as a great files management tool.

One significant way is to use the attachment. It’s very handy. We can directly drag and drop any required files into XMind as a subtopic of the exiting topic, or a floating topic. Double-click will open these attachments.  Fast and simple. But this may not be the best solution. Because:
XMind will save a copy file. Then, after editing them in XMind, the original version in your local computer will not be updated.
After inserting many files, esp. file with big size, your XMind file will become bigger. And it will use more time to open, save and close.

So here is the second way, Hyperlink, a better solution. You can build a hyperlink between any topic and any a local file/folder. It’s very simple.

Select a topic, Click “Ctrl+H” or hyperlink icon on toolbar, Select file, and here choose the file/folder and link type, “Absolute or Relative”. That’s all. And with one simple click, we can view and edit these linked files/folders in XMind directly.

BTW, if you usually move XMind files in your computer, such as from “D driver” to “E driver”, it’s better to use Absolute link. It can works after moving it. Note that this absolute links will be invalid if being moved to another computer.

If using Relative link, please do not change the relative position between XMind file and the linked files/folders. Then, you can bring them together, and work with this linked files anywhere. For example, if they are in one same folder, the links will work no matter where this folder is. This is very useful for working on airplane, doing presentation to clients, and etc.

Then all the files in the map present themselves to us. We can navigate the files within the map, organize and arrange them by changing the structure, color, line shape, and even use label, boundary, and theme.

With XMind, time will be saved, meanwhile, both ideas and files will be well organized.

P.S. here, we want to share another usage from a Chinese daily user. Hope this is useful.
He told us that they have many files (they are not allowed to save in other computers.) in their LAN server, and needed to link them in XMind. He hopes that the link in map will be available while he open linked files and show them to manager. He called us, because Absolute link and relative link neither worked.

After testing, we find Web link (select Web in Hyperlink dialog) is feasible. Instead of using “http://”, paste the target file position in to field, such as “\\venus\D\xmind-portable-3.1.1″, at last fill “\”+”file name”. Then inside their LAN, work goes fluently again.

Now, please enjoy our XMind Pro XMAS family package!

Another important thing we would like to share with you is:
Our website, XMind.net has been revised successfully.

Here I list some major changes of our website:

1. More attractive Home page: More friendly and good-looking design. You will find the target information easily.
2. New website with many improvements, especially can work fluently on any browsers.
3. New Downloading: Save your time, be nice, considerate to you. Two editions, one Package only.
4. Better viewer for your online maps: Make every effort to build perfection.

At last, on this Thanksgiving Day, we also would like to take the opportunity to thank you, our friends, thanks for all your support, thanks for being with XMind for so long time. We believe that with your support, your understanding, your patience, XMind can get better and better. We are so deeply grateful to all of these, and we will take this as our forward momentum!
Wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving Day!

As I wrote before, all the XMind Pro features that I listed can benefit Project Management a lot. Now, let’s step into another important feature, Presentation Mode.

First, I want to spend a little time talking about meeting. Undoubtedly, meetings run through the whole project. How to get our meetings effective during Project Management? Is there any good approach to have a meaningful meeting? Presentation Mode in XMind Pro is entering to its stage.

Let’s take project status reports for example. How to express your project status clearly, how to make your co-workers get fully understood of what you are talking about? The answer is to use XMind Presentation mode, which can help you to present your thought perfectly to others according to the map you drew.

As we know, XMind is a great and powerful visual thinking tool to help us to organize our ideas, plans, and tasks. And visual thinking tools are naturally good at communication. To enhance this advantage, XMind Pro brings the well-designed Presentation Mode. The Presentation mode allows us to browse maps with a minimum of distraction.

Press F5 to enter Presentation mode. Now the map appears on the whole screen rather than in a window. And only the central topic is highlighted on the center of Window. See as follows:

With the Arrow keys, we can navigate in Presentation mode fluently. While we are focusing on the current topic, we can also have a glance of the topics mentioned before:

There also is a hidden button panel in Presentation mode. Moving the mouse to the bottom, we will see it, which has six buttons. They can help us navigate the topics, zoom the map, highlight all topics, and Show Sidebar.

In this sidebar, we can see the outline of all opened works, enjoy the powerful filter, and enable audio notes. This sidebar should be remembered esp. while navigating a complicated map.

With this presentation mode, our audience can easily concentrate on the selected topic. At the same time, they can also read the topics we have navigated. This is the point. From the beginning, XMind shows all things as a whole.

From the task percentage, the difficulties you met when implementing the task, any other improvements in existing tasks, next major tasks, the estimated completion date, all the listed stuff can be arranged orderly, can be presented clearly. In Presentation mode, with arrow keys,  you can show them one by one. Then, your team members can see all the other stuffs you listed as a whole. Meanwhile, your customers could understand your clearly. Everything you present keeps their integrity, but have their own emphasis as well. Presentation mode in XMind will help you do better project status reports.

What about trying XMind Presentation mode to assist your Project Management, it won’t let you down.

It is obvious that Visual Think really can do something helpful to Project Management. XMind, as a great Visual Think/Brainstorming Software, can also benefit our Project Management via its friendly design, many powerful but easy-using features. In the coming several blogs, we’ll focus on how to make full use of XMind in managing projects.

Of all the features that XMind owns, Taskinfo, Gantt View, Powerful Filter, Map Merge, Presentation Mode, Fishbone Chart, Spreadsheet chart, Multiple Sheets/Workbook, Brainstorming mode/Timer* do play important roles in Project Management. Here goes the first one: Taskinfo and Gantt View.

When running a project, there are numerous things need to organize, such as: steps in the whole project, business requirements analysis in measurable goals, financial analysis of the costs and benefits, task assignment, task priority and so on. Therefore, how to get all these things done is not that easy.

Now, you may need XMind, a visual think tool. Suppose that in Executing Stage of a Project, drawing a mind map is very necessary to carry out all the things planed to do, such as business requirements, functions as it was intended, acceptable quality standards of the product, time and budget constraints, and all others aspects. Then we need to list all tasks, and each task has a start and end date, has its own priority and progress. It’s time for us to use Taskinfo. We can select the task and choose the start/end date, priority, and progress percentage for a certain task in the Taskinfo View, and even add the person in “Assigned to”*.

Everything is in order. Click “Show Gantt Chart” under View menu, we will easily check all these tasks and detailed information. Gantt Chart in XMind is a special Viewer illustrating a project schedule, showing the timelines of the tasks, ordering all tasks with their priorities. When does this task start, when does it end. Which tasks are urgent, should be done at once, which have not to. What’s the progress of a task. Moreover, moving a mouse to a task, we will see who are in charge of it in the future. Here, we can understand fully at one glance. I guess it will be a better idea for us to use this view to communicate/discuss with other members than just watching it by ourselves.

Apparently, you may be aware of that Taskinfo and Gantt View can do better performance when they work together. That’s definitely true. Finally, it seems that arranging and managing your tasks is not that hard.

How Effective and valuable approaches for Project Management, would you like to have the experience by yourself? Just do it, don’t be hesitate. Whatever you think of them, please make your voice heard.

*The features, Brainstorming/Timer and Assigned to, will be available in the coming version.
**Taskinfo and Gantt View are both available in XMind Pro only.

The wise had told us communication is very important in our life.
We also know Presentation is an important way to communicate with others, esp in work. There are many companies designing and developing the tools to let us perform better on presentation. And so do us.
Mind map brings us a great way to catch inspiration, organize sparkles, plan project, and more other things. While we designed it in 2007, we asked ourselves, since mind map is so powerful and useful, why don’t we present the map directly. Then managers, colleagues, customers,and clients can understand us more clearly. How perfect! From Oct. 2007, XMind 2008 Pro has a special feature, Full Screen Presentation. A brand-new method.
With many follow-up hours’ work, now Presentation is very stable. Here are some key points to present your map in XMind Pro:

Below are three screenshots:
1. Beginning. all topics are hidden, only central topic is highlighted, centralized and zoomed in:

2. During presentation. topics which have been navigated will be shown too.

3. Sidebar and Button panel. Move mouse to the bottom, you will see the panel button. Click sidebar button, you will see the powerful sidebar at the left side. Here, you can navigate, filter, and record.

This presentation mode is popular used to make speech in meeting, report in hall, etc. Maybe you’re willing to share some your experience with us.

XMind is still in development. This version has taken a littler more time. We’re still working on it, and will have it completed this month.
Now, let us preview part new features here.

Relative hyperlink
This feature enable we have more choices while adding local files.
Sorting Topics
Do you want to see the latest modified topic, or the task with the highest priority? These will be available in the coming version.
Powerful Search
Searching content in entire workbook and showing them with the full path, are these you wanted? Both available.
Default Theme
Theme is made up of topic color, shape, size, line color, background color, and etc. You will not only have ability to design and extract your own theme, but also let it be the default theme in your XMind Pro.

Time is up. If you want to enjoy all new features before releasing, please send an email to “info@xmind.net” with subject “XMind Beta Test” to join our beta test. Once beta version is OK, you will receive the download link and test account.

Tips:
Some users may upload the map by accident. In future, you can disable this button. Please Delete the file, net.xmind.share_3.0.3.200904291819.jar, which is at “plugin” folder in XMind installation folder. (if your operating system is XP, it should be at, C:\Program File\XMind\plugins)

This week, I had the opportunity to have a very nice conversation with Wallace Tait, a great Management Consultant, an expert in Visual thinking, mind mapping area. We talked about using visual thinking, mind mapping, XMind, and more. Below are part of what Wallace Tait’s say:

If your thoughts, feeling and actions are all firing together like three engine cylinders, then you get combustion, and this combustion produces results
Results are what people want, and the results are what gives people motivational movement to achieve more and more
Using a Mind map app such as XMind is an ideal tool to visualize your hopes, aspirations, wants and needs.
Have you ever seen someone using a Mind map for the first time? What they often produce, is a outward expression of their inward (subconscious) self.
Mind maps are very powerful motivational graphics, when used in the right manner, they give very tangible results
Data is made up of words and numbers, and when we humans aggregate (group) them, Data then becomes Information, and when Information is contextualized, it then becomes Knowledge, and if you use knowledge appropriately, it produces results that change everyone’s outlook on life
XMind can and does do this by the graphical nature of the mapping formats.