NovaMind Presenter Walkthrough Mode

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Transcript is as follows:

In this video, we will go into detail about how to use the Walkthrough mode of the Presenter, available in NovaMind Platinum.

You don’t need to do anything to your Mind Map to prepare it for doing a Walkthrough presentation.

When you want to start your Walkthrough presentation, just select the Presenter menu, and Start Walkthrough. This will start the presentation in full screen mode.

If you want to run your walkthrough presentation in a window instead of full screen, hold down the Option key – the menu item will change to “Start Walkthrough in Window”. The size of the window will depend on what you have selected in the “Windowed Presentation View Size”. This can be very useful if you want to have other things on the screen at the same time, or if you are on a webinar and want to share the presentation at a certain size, or if you are creating a video from your presentation.

When you choose the size of the presentation to be one of the standard sizes, NovaMind will resize the window so that the content area is the specified size, so that if you are recording the presentation for a video, you can crop it to that size and see just the content without the window title bar.

Once you are in the Walkthrough presentation, you can click on the gear icon to the bottom left of the window, to change the options used for the presentation.

The first three options are connected, so you can select the one you want:

“Don’t Expand Subtopics”, “Expand One Topic Level”, or “Expand Two Topic Levels”: this controls how many levels of subtopics are expanded when you visit a topic.

If you choose the “Don’t Expand Subtopics” option, the only topics shown will be those that are shown when you start the walkthrough, or any you manually expand. This is useful if you want to set up exactly which topics you want to present before the presentation, and not have any other topics automatically expanded during your walkthrough. Using this option also disables the Auto-collapse option, since the idea is to just show exactly what you had showing when you started the presentation.

The next option is “Visit All Topics”. If this is turned on and you are navigating through the walkthrough normally, each of the subtopics will be highlighted in turn before going on to the next topic. This can be useful if you treat your Mind Map like a list where you want to go through all the items and highlight and talk about each one in turn. If you have this option turned off, when you get to a topic which only has one level of subtopics, those subtopics will not be visited individually. If you think of it more as a topic with subtopics being reminders as to the meaning of the topic, then you might like to leave this option turned off.

And finally “Auto-collapse Topics”. If this option is turned on, the topics that are not being presented at the time are collapsed. This is useful if you want to just concentrate on that part of the Mind Map without being distracted by everything else. If this option is off, any topics that are expanded will not be collapsed again – this can be useful for progressive revelation of information.

When you change any of these settings, they will be remembered in your preferences, and used the next time you do a Walkthrough presentation.

While you are in the Presenter, you can exit the Presenter (no matter which mode you are in), but pressing the Escape key or Q key on the keyboard, or Command Period. You could also choose the End Presentation option from the menu if you are not running in full screen, or select the option to exit the presentation from the presentation mode popup.

If you need help or want to be reminded of the shortcut keys during your presentation, you can press the ? or / key to show the help. Press any key to close the help screen.

To go to the next topic in your walkthrough, if you are using a keyboard, you can press the Spacebar, Return, N, Enter, or Page Down. There is also a menu option under the Presentation Control menu, so you can assign a keyboard shortcut to that if you like, using the System Preferences. Using a mouse or trackpad, you can click on the right arrow button on the controls. Using the Apple remote, you can click the Play/Pause button.

When you use any of these options, it will take you to the next topic in logical order, visiting and highlighting the appropriate topics. If you have the Visit All Topics option turned on, this will mean that the leaf topics will be visited while keeping the parent topic in view.

You should be aware that you can not use the right arrow to go to the next topic in the walkthrough, since it uses the normal logic for selecting topics as if you were not in a Walkthrough.

To go to the previous topic in your walkthrough, if you are using a keyboard, press the P, or Page Up. There is also a menu option under the Presentation Control menu, so that you can assign a keyboard shortcut to that if you like using the System Preferences. Using a mouse or trackpad, you can click on the left button on the controls.

Again, you should be aware that you can not use the left arrow to go to the previous topic in the walkthrough, since that uses the normal logic for selecting topics as if you were not in a Walkthrough.

You use the arrow keys on the keyboard to navigate to the next topic in that physical direction, just the same as when you are not in a presentation. The only difference is that it will automatically expand and collapse subtopics as required to show the subtopics (unless you have set it to not expand subtopics). If you are using the Apple remote, then the +, forward, -, and rewind buttons act as if they were the arrow keys.

You can also click on any topic to select it.

In the Walkthrough mode, there can only be one topic selected at a time.

If you have multiple Mind Maps in your document you can go to the next Mind Map by using the } or ] key. If you are using an Apple remote, you can press and hold the right arrow/fast forward button to switch to the next Mind Map. You can switch to the previous one using the { or [ key. If you are using an Apple remote, you can press and hold the rewind button to go back to the previous Mind Map.

If a topic has notes on it, you can show the notes by selecting that topic and pressing T, or clicking on the notes indicator. To hide the notes, click outside the area where the note is displayed, or type any key. NovaMind makes the notes text bigger so that it is readable on a presentation, and you probably don’t want to have long notes, but if the note is too long, you can scroll it, and also you can use a mouse or trackpad to select text to highlight it.

To hide the notes, click outside the area where the note is displayed, or type any key.

During your presentation you can draw on the screen by clicking and dragging using a mouse or trackpad. This can be useful for highlighting areas of interest or things you are talking about at the time.

The first line you draw is red, and then different colors are used for the other lines you draw, so that you can refer to the lines by color if you like. Lines are removed when you move to another topic in the walkthrough presentation, and you can remove just the last drawn line by pressing either the Delete or Backspace key. If you want to remove all the lines without going to another topic, press the C key.

The lines you draw during the presentation are just temporary, and are not stored in your document at all.

If you are in the middle of a presentation, and want to stop, and hide the Mind Map so as not to distract people, you can cover the presentation with a white screen or black screen. To cover with white, press W, or to cover with black, press B. To return to the presentation, just click anywhere or press any key.

Although the scrollbars are hidden while presenting, if you have a trackpad, you can still scroll using a two finger swipe. You can also pan by pressing and holding the spacebar while clicking and dragging with the mouse.

There is a slider along with the presentation controls, which allows you to zoom in or out, and you can use pinch zooming if you are using a trackpad. If you are using an Apple remote, you can press and hold the + button to zoom in, or press and hold the – button to zoom out.

When you select different topics, the topics are expanded and collapsed as per the walkthrough configuration, but if you do need to expand and contract subtopics manually, the controls are still enabled. If you have auto-collapse turned on, when you select a different topic, the expansion status of the topics will be set automatically again.

The hyperlink and attachment controls are active, so you can click them. The required application will be opened to show the link or file. If you are using OSX 10.7 or later and running the presentation in full screen mode, it will switch you out of the Space that is used to do the presentation, but when you go back to NovaMind, it will be there as it was before.

If you are in the middle of a Walkthrough presentation, and want to edit your Mind Map, you can switch to Edit mode, and edit your Mind Map to suit, and then switch back to Walkthrough mode to continue your walkthrough. You can also switch to slide presentation mode if you have defined slides, and then switch back to walkthrough mode when you want to.

So that’s pretty much everything that is in the Walkthrough mode of the Presenter. It’s very simple to use, but has a lot of power there when you need it.