Another significant step towards the release of NovaMind 5 was achieved yesterday with the release of the first version of the technology preview for Mac. Here are some screen shots of some of the significant features:

We invented the concept of the Rainbow Coloring so that you could automatically have colorful Mind Maps. This is still a strong point to this day, with many people saying that they love not having to think about the colors, and yet automatically getting interesting, colorful Mind Maps. So we decided to improve on the concept in several important ways. Firstly, we added the ability to alter the brightness of the colors to give you finer control, and secondly, we added the ability to have alternating colors, so every second topic has its color taken from the opposite side of the colorwheel. This avoids a problem with the rainbow coloring where the adjacent topics are almost identical in color. This allows you to do things like this:

But this left an issue we were keen to address, and that is that some people only want some colors on their topics, so we invented another new way of coloring the subtopics automatically, and that is called Interpolated coloring. You have a color ring which you can drop colors on. You can have as many colors as you like, and it will interpolate between the colors like this:

But often you just want a set of specific colors, so we invented yet another coloring mechanism, which is called the Color Set. You can add as many colors as you like to the set, and NovaMind will cycle through the colors and apply them to the children. For instance, if you wanted alternating colors to make it easy to follow the subtopics, you could have just two colors in your colorset. Here’s an example with 3 colors:

Together, these options give you massive amounts of control over the automatic coloring, but there was one more limitation, and that is that in earlier versions of NovaMind, you could only set the coloring on the Mind Map title, so we changed that so you can now you can have automatic children coloring set on any topic.

So let’s talk a bit about topics.

We have introduced a number of new topic shapes as you can see here:

The last four topics are of particular interest, seeing as they are what we call Custom Topic Shapes. When you select that option, you can select each of the for quadrants individually and set it to be angled left or right, chamfered, square, or rounded. This gives you a massive amount of flexibility to make your Mind Maps say what you want them to say.

We are also showing some new topic coloring options, like this gradient fill:

And if you want something that gives you even more control and flexibility, you can create a detailed gradient like the one shown here.

I guess that is a bit of an extreme example, but it gives you and idea of the power of the fill options.

We also have the layout options like what we have in the Windows Technology Preview – this image shows you what they look like in the Mac version.

So that’s just a few of the things that are new in the NovaMind 5 Technology Preview for Mac. This release marks a very significant step in the development process. The progress has been really good over the last few weeks, and we are expecting to make good progress from here on in as we attend to bugs and implementing the rest of the functionality to get it ready for release.

NovaMind had a strong presence at the BETT show in London, with a huge amount of interest being shown by many school districts, schools, and individual teachers in the capabilities in NovaMind.

There was particular interest in the new layout engine in NovaMind 5, with the unique ability to lay out the topics at any angle, and to keep the Mind Maps compact at all times, while allowing the user to place topics wherever they want. Also the coloring systems to make the Mind Maps look interesting and yet keep them consistent and looking good were very popular. Most of the demonstrations were done on the Windows version of NovaMind which has been in Technical Preview stage since October, and is therefore already pretty well tested and running smoothly.

A number of current users of the Mac version of NovaMind came by to have a look at what is coming in NovaMind 5, and were impressed with the new inspector system and ease of access to the advanced features of NovaMind 5 while keeping the program easy to use. The technical preview for Mac is expected to be released by the end of January, giving our Mac users the opportunity to try out the new features of NovaMind 5, while we continue to put the finishing touches to it ready for release.

Here’s a picture of Gideon King, founder of NovaMind at the NovaMind stand before the show began:

The face of Mind Mapping with NovaMind has just changed dramatically once again. Now you get to choose from a wide range of connection styles which allow you vast amounts of creative freedom with the way your Mind Maps are drawn.

To give you an idea of the flexibility of the new Mind Map drawing, here is an example of what you can create:

NovaMind Mind Map Connection Lines

There have been user interface changes to allow you access to the new features, so we have put together a video showing you the how to use the new functions in both the Windows and Mac versions of NovaMind:

 

 How to use the new Mind Map connection lines in NovaMind: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

NovaMind are pleased to introduce a new export to Microsoft Word DOCX format. The video below gives you the details.

This is a very full featured and powerful export feature of NovaMind. Of course you’ve always been able to select the Mind Map title and copy and paste the text into Word, but you didn’t get it the Word outline format and you didn’t get all the images or hyperlinks.

With the new export feature, all that has changed.

When you export a Mind Map to Word, the Mind Map title becomes the title of the document, and each branch is mapped to a Word heading according to its level. This allows you to generate tables of contents and work in outline mode if you want to.

All of the text is added to the document using the Word default fonts unless you have explicitly set a font or color in NovaMind. If you have only set the style of some of the text, the rest of the text will take the Word default formatting for the attributes of the text you haven’t changed, and for the rest of the text. This means that the Word templates and styles are easily applied and update the text in the same way as if you had made those changes in the text within Word.

The text comes across using the standard Word formatting except where we explicitly set it to something else.

And if we apply a specific style to the document in Word, then it applies that style to the text of the document.

You can also work with the NovaMind themes without affecting this – only the text styles that you have changed to be something different than the theme settings will have those specific settings applied in the Word document. This allows you to use the full power of the Word themes for your Word document.

Also, the hyperlinks on your NovaMind document are translated into the MS Word equivalent – either hyperlinks or bookmarks and links if the link is to another branch.

The images are exported, including any reflections you have put on the images. This also includes attached graphics and adornments.

Also the branch notes are exported, including any embedded graphics.

All of these features are designed to give you the absolute best experience when you export your NovaMind document to MS Word.

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This video will teach you the NovaMind user interface and Mind Mapping terminology.

Here is the Windows version:

And the Mac version:

 

 Flash Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Flash Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

NovaMind is pleased to announce the first of a new series of tutorial videos on NovaMind for Mac. This first video shows you all the basics of creating your first mind map in NovaMind.

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Flash Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We are very pleased to announce that the Mac version of the new NovaMind screenwriting system has entered beta testing.

The new screenwriter has been completely rewritten from the ground up, and has many new features, and works in a completely different way to the old version.

It has the entire screenplay showing with the script for the selected branch highlighted, and you can move through and edit the script inline, and it will keep the branch selection updated to suit. It has inline scene numbering, new pagination controls to split dialogues appropriately, improved completions, more flexible layout options, and many other new features.

If you would like to join the beta test, you will need to be a NovaMind 4 Platinum licensed user, and you can send an email to our support team and they will point you to the place where you can sign up to be a beta tester. 

NovaMind software currently has job openings for people to join our Mac development team. Please see our NovaMind jobs page for full details on this job opening.

NovaMind Software has released an update to NovaMind Express, Pro and Platinum, which brings full compatibility with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. If you are running Leopard, please make sure you are running the latest NovaMind version (currently version 4.0.14). This can be downloaded directly from the NovaMind web site, or by using the check for update function within NovaMind.

Along with the release of NovaMind Platinum, NovaMind has released a special platinum graphics library which contains images up to 7 times the resolution of the images in the standard libraries.

In addition to providing the higher resolution images, you get over 900 extra high resolution images to use on your Mind Maps.

This means that the total number of images you get in the Platinum graphics library is over 2,300. All the images are in a single graphics library download, making for easy download and installation.

NovaMind 4 Platinum for Mac has been released, and includes many new features.

NovaMind Presenter

One unique and powerful feature is the NovaMind Presenter – I’ve created a video showing some aspects of the presenter and what you can do with it: Watch the video.

Project and Task Planning

There are also many features relating to project and task planning. The images below give an impression of some of the capabilities:

Panel for setting up the resources for the project. Resources can be dragged in from Address book.

Resources allocated to the selected branch. If the option is turned on, the branch shows an indicator to show that there are assigned resources, and there is a tooltip showing the resource names. Resources can be assigned by dragging them from the resources to either the branch or the allocated resources window.

Task settings for the branch.

Some of the indicators showing the status directly on the branch.

The project reporting functionality where you can search for branches matching any of the indicated criteria.

Reviewer Ulf Cronenberg says “NovaMind 4 Pro is a mind mapping software I liked from the first moment I used it. Intuitively you can get best results in creating mind maps. In comparison with earlier versions of NovaMind the user interface became much better, and the usability has been improved a lot.”

Ulf commented about the new user interface in NovaMind 4, saying that it is “very slick”, and liked the ability to reorder and collapse the palettes. He found himself very at home using NovaMind, and liked the FlexiBranches, and the video tutorials in particular.

NovaMind was awarded the “Redaktionstipp” award for good software.

You can read the article here (in German).

NovaMind are pleased to announce that the first stage of our beta testing of NovaMind 4 Platinum has started.

The beta will be conducted in stages, testing each of the new components.

The first beta has the focus of testing the recording of task and resource related information, and reporting on the task information collected.

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of NovaMind 4 Pro and NovaMind 4 Express for Mac. NovaMind 4 is a complete rewrite of major portions of NovaMind, and introduces many new features like Map Styles, Themes, Graphic Styles, Templates, Document View, a completely new user interface, and many improvements throughout the application. NovaMind 4 can be downloaded from the NovaMind downloads page.

NovaMind 4 Pro for Mac has just started beta testing. NovaMind 4 Express for Mac has been in beta testing for three weeks and most of the issues have been resolved, many of which were issues that also would have affected NovaMind Pro, so we expect the beta testing period for NovaMind 4 Pro to be relatively short.

I would like to take the opportunity at this time to thank those who have assisted us with the testing of NovaMind Express, and continue to help us with NovaMind Pro beta testing.

Well all of those many months of development work are bearing fruit with the first beta release of NovaMind 4 Express for Mac. The Express version has all the basic Mind Mapping functionality built in, and allows the creation of high quality Mind Maps. It is primarily aimed at the primary and secondary education market and casual Mind Map user.

We are expecting to start the NovaMind 4 Pro for Mac beta testing in the next week or two, and hope that will be a relatively short beta testing period before we go live with it.

Our Mac development team have also been busy adding some useful extensions to NovaMind, as follows:

• New update checker with full version history
• Keyboard shortcuts for Mind Map switching
• Ability to drag an image from the graphics library to use as a background image
• Improved scale control of image exports
• Ability to drag large images on at their original size
• Tooltips on contextual menus

To download the latest version (3.2.10), either use the NovaMind "check for update" feature, or click here to download. 

MacWorld was absolutely hectic, and we had so many people visit our booth that we didn’t have any time to catch our breath between when the show opened and when it closed each day. Thank you for all those who visited us at the show, and especially to Alicia, Frank and John for helping make sure it all happened, and was so successful.

We are once again planning to have a stand at MacWorld 2008 – we have our booth booked already! We look forward to meeting you there.