We are very happy to announce the immediate availability of NovaMind 5.7. If you have NovaMind installed already, it should come through on the automatic update system, or you can download from the NovaMind web site.

Format Painter

One of the new features is the format painter. This allows you to quickly take the settings from one topic and paste them to another topic, or multiple other topics.

The format painter is on the home tab of the ribbon bar. To use the format painter:

1. Select the topic you want to copy the settings from
2. Click the format painter button
3. Click the topic you would like the formatting pasted to

If you want to copy the formatting of a topic to multiple topics:

1. Select the topic you want to copy the formatting from
2. Double-click the format painter button
3. Click on each of the topics you would like to paste to in turn
4. Click the format painter button again to turn it off

Color Set Editing

In the Pro and Platinum editions of NovaMind, you can create and edit color sets, so that you can change the colors of all the themed colors across the entire Mind Map in a single operation.

In the Map Design tab, you will see the colors option, under which you will see the color sets you have available. The built in color sets are ones that come with NovaMind. At the right side of each row, there is a button to allow you to create a new color set based on that color set. This will open up the color set editor like this:

You can click any of the colors to show the color selector, which allows you to use either a color triangle or RGB sliders to set the color. Once you have finished, save your color set, and you can select it from the colors menu.

Font Set Editing

The mechanism for editing the font sets is the same as for the color sets – just that you are working with fonts instead of colors. Note that the name of the fonts is based on their suggested use in themes – if you are using the theme editor to create or edit themes, we strongly recommend that you use these fonts in the way their name suggests. This will ensure a consistent and understandable experience when changing font sets later.

About The Update

This is a significant free update for NovaMind 5 users, and includes a wide range of new features and updates throughout. Here’s a list of the significant changes:

• New: FlexiTopics enabling more organic looking Mind Maps where text flows on a flexible line.
• New: Ability to set a custom default theme for new Mind Maps.
• New: Format painter to quickly re-use a style from a topic or shape.
• New: New Themes: NovaMind, Draft, Flexible Rainbow and Pinboard.
• New: Themes can now set background style, notes style and boundary styles.
• New: You can set an opacity of themed colors.
• Improved: Reworked built-in themes.
• Improved: Theme thumbnails no longer re-calculate when opening the theme gallery.
• Improved: The layout of topics which have a different layout orientation than their parent is now handled better.
• Improved: Added more keytips on the ribbon.
• Improved: Moved the Background drop down button in Map Design under the Fonts button to save space.
• Improved: When creating a new Mind Map from a topic, the new Mind Map uses the same theme as the source Mind Map.
• Changed: The ‘Default’ theme has been renamed to ‘Basic’.
• Fixed: Thumbnail images of Mind Maps are not saved correctly in file.
• Fixed: Flexible Line may jump while editing when the auto-save is performed.
• Fixed: Shape and color of attached shapes are reset when resetting a Mind Map to a theme.
• Fixed: Fill color is not set when setting a solid fill color via the Format ribbon tab on a topic which uses an advanced gradient.
• Fixed: Cannot see decimal value on outline stroke width slider.
• Fixed: Link line terminator scale settings of selected link lines reset to 20/20 when opening the format shape window.

NovaMind Pro and Platinum specific changes:

• New: Create your own Theme.
• New: Create your own Font Sets.
• New: Create your own Color Sets.
• New: Added support for importing relative hyperlinks from MindManager.
• Fixed: NovaMind 4 import did not import task data and checkboxes.
• Fixed: a rare error when importing iMindMap 5 files.

Platinum:

• Fixed: Exception in walk-through presentation when “auto collapse” is disabled and “visit all topic” is enabled.
• Fixed: In the presentation slide selector some slides show with a brown background color.

To our Mac users: This is not yet available on the Mac and we don’t have an ETA for this on the Mac yet but we will implement this on the Mac as well. Our Mac team has been very busy rewriting most of our data layer to crush some of the instability issues that have been affecting some users on the Mac.

Summary

NovaMind continues to improve, with the addition of a wide range of powerful features to help you to create great looking Mind Maps even more easily. We look forward to hearing your feedback on the new features.