Hyperlinks

NovaMind 5 can have multiple hyperlinks on a single topic. Hyperlinks can either be links to web pages, links to files on your computer, links to Mail messages, or links to other topics in your document.

To add the first hyperlink, you can use the Insert / Hyperlink menu item.

A panel like this will be displayed:

If you want to link to a web page, type in the URL that you would like to link to. If you would like the link displayed as something other than the URL, then type the display text in the Display As field like this:

Click the OK button to save your settings. The panel will show the link like this:

If you want to link to another topic on the Mind Map, click the Topic... button, and a panel like this will open, allowing you to select a topic to link to:

The dialog will show all the topics on all the Mind Maps in your file, and you can select one to link to by either double-clicking it, or selecting it and clicking the OK button.

When you select a topic to link to, by default the Display As option will show the word "Topic:" and then the title of the topic, so you can see at a glance which are internal topic links, like this:

If you want to select a file to link to, just click the File... button and a standard file open dialog will appear, allowing you to select the file.

When you add a file hyperlink, it is initially a fully qualified path, but if you want, you can also use relative paths. A relative path will not start with a / , and starts from the folder where the document is saved. It can refer to the current folder with a single period (.) and the parent folder using two periods (..). So for instance, if this file shown above was in the same folder as my Mind Map, I could refer to it just as 1-all-scaled.tiff or as ./1-all-scaled.tiff

Note that if you add a relative link and you have not saved your document at all, then although it will show the link, it will just be plain text and not clickable, since it doesn't know what the link is relative to. It will become active when you first save the file.

File hyperlinks do not get updated automatically when you move a file to a different folder, or open the Mind Map on a different computer, so if the files end up in different locations, you will need to update the links. For this reason, you may like to consider attaching the file instead of just linking to it.

To follow a link, you would just click on the hyperlink. When you first open hyperlinks to web sites or to open a file, a warning dialog will be shown like this:

This is just to help with security. If you do not wish to see the dialog again for hyperlinks, check the "Don't show this message again" checkbox. Note that this panel is also shown for opening attached files, but has a different preference setting, so if you don't want it shown there either, then you would have to disable it there too. Once you have disabled it, the setting is saved in your preferences so as to not bother you about it again.

If you mouse over the hyperlink it will show you the actual destination URL:

The other buttons on this panel are:

The X button deletes the hyperlink.
The pencil button allows you to edit the hyperlink.
The + button allows you to add another hyperlink from within the panel.

When you click away from the panel or to another application, the panel will close and you will be left with a hyperlink indicator that shows that you have hyperlinks on the topic:

To show the panel again, click on the icon. You can have multiple hyperlinks on a single topic. The newest hyperlink is shown at the top of the list, since it is probably the one you are most likely to want to access.

Creating Links by Drag and Drop

You can drag and drop URLs from just about any browser. Just drag the icon beside the URL onto the topic on your Mind Map. The name of the hyperlink will be set to the page title, but you can edit it if you want to.
You can drag a mail message on from Mail application to create a hyperlink to that mail message. When you click on it, the message will be opened in Mail.
You can drag folders from the Finder onto a topic to create a link to that folder.
You can create links to a file by dragging it on to the topic. When you click on a link to a file, it will be opened in its default program.

A special note about files:

When you drag a file onto a topic, you will see a dialog like this:

This is because a file could either be linked to as a hyperlink, or embedded in the NovaMind document as an attached file. To add it as a hyperlink, click the Hyperlink to File option.

A special note about image files:

When you drag an image on, it is normally added as an image on the topic. If you instead want to link to it or attach it, press the ⌘ Command key while you drop it.

A special note about PDF files:

PDF files can either be thought of as documents or as images. In most cases, you will probably want them treated as files, so the default behavior is the same as dragging on other files, but if you want it treated as an image and put on the topic as an image, press the ⌘ Command key while dropping the PDF on the topic.