A little Christmas surprise from NovaMind :)

[Patrick]

Hi all,

Just before our Windows dev team leaves for our Christmas holidays we finished up a beta release to demonstrates what will come in NovaMind 5.7 early next year.

I know a lot of you have been waiting for these features so here is a picture to demonstrate it all.



The long awaited FlexiTopics are finally here! The above example is just how FlexiTopics look if you just let NovaMind handle the layout. You can fine tune them to your hearts content and go really crazy with them. Below is a more advanced example which showcases custom shaped lines, multi-line text, adornment icons, check boxes, task priority and outline numbering as well as our international language support:



It took a lot of effort to enable all of this and we all hope you will like the new FlexiTopics.

Not only will 5.7 have FlexiTopics but we also introduce our new theme editor including color set and font set editors. I know that many have been itching to create their own themes or adjust the existing themes a bit.

The Theme editor:



With the new theme editor you can easily create great looking themes. We also made it easy to create variations of existing themes. Because it is now so easy to create new themes we have already added some to the application. The first picture above is our Welcome Mind Map using the new Draft theme which also makes use of the FlexiTopics.

Here is the same Mind Map using the NovaMind theme:



Here using the existing Business theme (with a Grayscale color set):



And here is another new theme called Pinboard:




You can download the NovaMind 5.7 beta  here.
Disclaimer: This beta release will replace your existing NovaMind 5 installation. Install and use it at your own risk. - Once we release NovaMind 5.7 the beta will automatically update to the latest version. Please report any issues with the beta to support.


Also, if you create a cool looking Theme feel free to share it here or send it to support. We would love to see some creations and we are also open for suggestions on which themes we should add to the application.

We will look at the feedback after Christmas 


NovaMind 5.7 will be another free update to our existing NovaMind 5 customers.
FlexiTopics will be available in all editions.
The Theme editor is available in Pro & Platinum but the Express edition can import and use custom Themes from other users.

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.

I hope you like these changes.

Happy Holidays from all at NovaMind and thank you for your continued support. We are looking forward to a great 2012.

Patrick

PS: We will update our blog soon with a more official announcement 

[Gideon]

Here's more information in a couple of blog posts:

http://www.novamind.com/blog/2011/announcements-novamind-5-for-windows/flex-topics/
http://www.novamind.com/blog/2011/announcements-novamind-5-for-windows/theme-editor/

Enjoy...

[olaf_gy]

The FlexiTopics are great. I see one issue, the created files are incorrect opening them in the Mac Version of NM5.

One question in my Virtual Machine I run a German Windows environment, so the NM5 Version show German menus. I don't have the tab "Theme Editor" shown in the figures. Is there a trick to activate or is this due to the German version?

[Patrick]

The FlexiTopics are not available on the Mac version yet. The Mac version should just show them as normal line topics when you open the file.

The Theme Editor tab is only visible when you edit a theme. To edit a theme click on the small arrow next to the Theme on the Map Design tab and click Edit. The parts of the user interface which are new have not been translated yet in the beta so you will see them in English. Hope this helps.

[olaf_gy]

Hi Patrick,

thanks for the fast reply I found the Editor tab, with your hint.

Regarding Mac opening, my expectation was as you mentioned, to get a file with normal lines, but see attached 2 screenshots, first is the file in Windows (there are some strange "jumped" in the right topic list, I cannot influence or correct these). But the second screenshot with the same file opened in the Mac version doesn't show any text.

[Patrick]

I see. Thanks for reporting this. I'm not sure what you mean by 'jumped'. I assume that you refer to the connection line between the different topics. Because you can freely mix flexi topics with normal topics (and also use the usual layout settings and connection types) we still need to draw a connection line between flexitopics so it isn't possible to have one organic line that consists out of multiple sub-topics.

[NigelH]

love it!!

It is great when a company not only hears what customers are asking for, but spends the resources to apply the changes to the products.

Thanks to all involved...as a newbie to NM, makes me really happy I chose NM5!!

Merry Christmas and happy New Year.

Nigel.

[magicmind08]

Great upgrade.
The flexibranches are AWESOME!! 

Thanks a lot!

[Patrick]

5.7 has been officially released. The beta version will notify about this update automatically. Please update!
Another new feature in 5.7 is the ability to set transparency on theme colors. This is especially useful in the theme editor.

Enjoy   

[TheGhost]

are flex-topics available on the Express version?
(which I just bought today)

ps
please remove CAPTCHA from a simple post !@
you already do a positive affirmation when we register
this is more than OVER KILL !

[Patrick]

Hi. YES, flexitopics are available on the Express version

Unfortunately we have to use CAPTCHA for new users. Once you post more you don't have to enter a CAPTCHA for every post. Sadly, without this our forums are flooded with SPAM.

[TheGhost]

ref: captcha = ok - I also host a few forums and use SMF as well

and

got flex topic topics to work (hard to find - it was a SHAPE - like a square or a circle)
now - how can we change the color or thickness of the flex topic line!
maybe even set thickness of each end ??
this is a GREAT gift - as it is one of THE features my son missed from iMindMap
as the odd color lines sometimes made the map 'messier looking'
but that enhanced learning/remembering