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.

About Themes

Themes set the overall look and feel of your Mind Maps. They define what types of topics will be added by default at different levels, what fonts and colors will be used, and are the canvas on which you build your Mind Map. Themes allow you to alter the overall look of a Mind Map in a single operation, setting colors, topic shapes, fonts etc, throughout your entire Mind Map, while still honoring any custom settings you have made.

No other Mind Mapping program has anything as powerful as the NovaMind theme system, and now we have made it better by adding new standard themes and a theme editor so that you can create your own themes (available in NovaMind Pro and Platinum).

Examples

Here are some examples created by taking the introductory Mind Map and applying different themes to it:

This uses the NovaMind theme.

This uses the Draft theme, which uses the new FlexiTopics throughout. See the separate blog post about FlexiTopics for more information.

This uses the Business theme, along with a grayscale color set.

This one uses the Corkboard theme.

Note that to get to any of these Mind Maps, there was no editing of the Mind Map itself – just changing the theme. This shows you the power of themes, and what you can do with the new standard themes.

Theme Sharing

In the Map Design tab of the ribbon bar, you can see all the available themes. Beside each of them is a little down arrow, which you can click on to show the available options. One of these options is to export the theme. When you use this option, the theme is saved and can be sent to someone else for them to use.

If you have created a theme which you think would be generally useful for other users, feel free to send it to NovaMind support, and we may be able to share themes with others where appropriate. Please ensure that only non-copyrighted images and generally available fonts are used.

At the right end of the themes gallery on the Map Design tab there is a down arrow with a line above it. Click on this to show all the themes, and the extra options. There you will see the option to import a theme. Select the theme file to import and it will be added to your gallery.

Favorite and Default themes

Themes are normally organized in alphabetical order, and the current theme is highlighted. If you have favorite themes you would like to appear before the other themes, then you can use the popup menu for the theme to mark a theme as a favorite.

When you create a new Mind Map, the default theme is used – you can use the popup menu for a theme to set it as the default. It will then have a checkmark towards the bottom left of the theme image so you can easily see which is the current default theme.

The Theme Editor

If you are using NovaMind Pro or Platinum, you can create your own themes using the theme editor.

You can create a theme either from the current Mind Map, or from an existing theme.

To create a theme from the current Mind Map, go to the Map Design tab and at the right end of the Themes gallery, you will see a down arrow with a line above it. Click it to show the options. You will see an option to create a new theme from the current Mind Map. NovaMind will take the first of each type of relevant attribute it comes to and use that for setting up a theme. You can edit it from there to adjust to the settings you want.

To edit an existing theme, find the theme in the themes gallery and click on the arrow button to the right of it to show the options. Choose the option to edit it.

How to edit the theme

In the theme editor, you have options as follows:

• Theme name: sets the name the theme will be saved as.
• Save…: save the theme you are editing.
• Colors: You can choose an existing color set, edit, or create your own color set.
• Fonts: You can choose an existing font set, edit, or create your own font set.
• Background: Gives access to all the standard background settings, including setting a texture image.
• Font Size: This allows you to easily make the font size bigger or smaller for the entire theme without having to go in to each item individually or selecting multiple items.
• Line Width: As for font size, this allows increasing or decreasing of the line width for all the items on the theme.
• Sub-topics settings: These are pretty self explanatory – the same as for editing a Mind Map.
• Shape settings: Again, these are pretty self explanatory, but please note that the settings for a theme apply to all the topics at that level, or of that type (for callouts or link lines or floating topics), so for instance, when you select a topic and change its shape, all the other topics at that level will change too.

You can also set the fonts and font sizes on the topics, though we recommend that you always stick with theme fonts (create your own font set if you need to), so that the Mind Maps change nicely when the users apply different font sets.

You can also add additional levels of subtopics if you want to set formats for deeper levels, or delete levels if you don’t want to define the theme beyond a certain level (subtopics will just inherit the settings).

If you need to access other tabs to do the editing, you can do so, and then either return to the Theme Editor tab, or click the Close Theme Editor button.

When you are finished editing, you can save your theme. Before you save, you will be able to see a preview Mind Map automatically generated from the theme, so you can double check that it is going to do what you want.

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 again brings the most powerful and useful tools to you, with the ability to create and edit your own themes, and share them with others. No other Mind Mapping application provides this power and flexibility. We look forward to hearing how you go with the theme editor.