It was a little bit quiet on this blog in the last months. But finally we are on our way to 1.0 with some new features we introduced in the current build #26.

As maybe some of you have noticed, there have been some troubles and infrastructure changes to Mind42 during the last months. We moved our database as well as the webserver. Honestly we didn’t only do this because of we needed the infrastructure for build #26 features, but because we had to due to some failures on the old server. By now all this should be over. New database and webserver - New service monitoring - New features. So here we go:

New map dialog: Our new mind map dialog got much clearer, features a preview of the map (available after saving your mind map), and also the open and delete buttons aren’t so close to each other. We hope you like it.

Image/PDF export: We finally rolled out an image and PDF export option, which was one of the most demanded features overall. Now you can embed mind maps into your documents sing the PNG export, or print them using the PDF export. If the results aren’t as expected just write us a mail so we can optimize this.

The whole rest: Due to the new server Mind42 now should be faster an more reliable than before. As always we’ve also fixed some bugs, and last but not least: We’ve added an offset reset button within the settings dialog. Sometimes moving a nodes offset (dragging the move icon) gets confused with reordering a node (dragging the node). Therefor there have been cases with unusable maps due to immense offsets. If you ever have this problem you now can use the reset offsets button.

With this release we finally are on our way to 1.0, and we would be pleased about every bug report, so that we can finally remove the nearly one year old beta tag of Mind42.

E-Mail - Mailing List - Changelog

The first release after the holidays - the first release in 2008. Since we plan to finish our BETA in the first half of 2008 this is a pure bugfix release. As always, the full list of changes and bugfixes can be found in our Changelog.

The most important change this time is, that our user database now works case-insensitive. This means that a different upper/lower-case spelling of the same username now refers to the same account, which makes logging in easier (you don’t have to remember how you spelled your name on signup), and reduces likelihood of confusion. Unfortunately we had to rename some usernames which violated against this new setup. The affected users have been informed.

In the end I would like to spotlight our new FAQ which, like the changelog, could be found in our Google Group. If you are missing any important answers in the FAQ please don’t hesitate to let us know.

It was about time for a new release, and here it is. As the beta phase of Mind42 is drawing to a close, this build features a bunchload of polishing and optimizations. But also two new features, namely:

• Additional icon methods
• Additional font styling options

The icon additions include the ability to add multiple icons to a node as well as removing them via right click. But we’ve also introduced icon groups. Icon groups are made up of icons which belong to each other, like different colored flags, the different number icons, or the new todo progress icons. When adding such an icon to a node you can easily iterate through the icons of that group by clicking the icon. For the todo icons this for example easily allows you to advance the progress of a node without having to enter any menu.

The new font styling options enhance the already existing node coloring options. Now you can manually set the size and style of nodes.

In addition to the new features there are mainly some reliability improvements as well as performance tunings and optical polishing. A full list of changes, as always can be found at our Google Goup Changelog Page.

By the way: Except image export and printing capabilities this features should have been the last new features for the beta. Of course we’re still working on some server issues and an enhanced homepage, but from a mind map editor feature perspective the current state closely reflects the 1.0 version of Mind42.

Feedback as always appreciated:
mind42@irian.at - Google Group - Comments

We’re sorry for the inconvenience, but we currently have some problems with our database… We are working on it…

Update: Access was restored. Thank you for your patience.

Hi everybody!

It has been a long time since the last build which is more than a month ago. But we haven’t slept, we’ve just refractored, optimized and polished Mind42 to improve the overall experience of Mind42. Here comes the feature list of the new build:

• Increased UTF8 support (attachments, import, export, …)
• Increased performance (copy/past, drag & drop, deletion, … of branches is much faster now + faster published map view)
• Changed handling of unavailable images (they no longer disappear + now there is a retry button available)
• Added invitation link lookup to the collaborators dialog

But now, before releasing you to explore the new features and give me some feedback, I want to spend some words on the last of the mentioned features. As we keep getting mails of users whose invitations never arrive at their invitees we’ve thought about how to deal with this. Besides optimizing our mail server, we decided to add an “invitation link lookup” to the collaboration dialog. Therefore the list of unredeemed invitations got a new icon with a question mark. If clicked it shows you the link to accept the invitation. This allows you to get the link, and send it to your invitee yourself if the mail got stuck anywhere. We hope this temporary solution for the lost mail problem is acceptable for everybody.

As always: Feedback appreciated!
Comments - mind42@irian.at - Google Group

After the transition last week mostly everything ran fine, except some smaller bugs (and one bigger bug were all attachments have been missing) which got fixed with this release. Namely:

• Fixed missing attachments
• Fixed certain cases where map couldn’t be loaded with an error
• Repaired link preview bubble within published maps
• Fixed missing updates for the birdview
• Added missing link preview thumbnail in Safari 2
• Fixed note attachment textbox within IE7

But there also have been general improvements. We’ve enhanced our Import/Export capabilities and changed the system images get loaded. Like this mindmaps containing many images should feel significantly faster. Also for scaled down images it’s now possible to see a full screen view of the image by clicking on the magnifying glass above the image.

Feedback as always appreciated! Either as a comment to this blog post, or in our Google Group.

As announced two days ago we’ve had a short maintenance downtime today. And as promised, a load of new features and Bugfixes. Here a list of the new features:

• Cut/Copy/Paste
• Autosave
• Added warning on page-leave with unsaved changes
• Added shortcut Ctrl-S to save mindmap
• New configuration dialog for autosave-interval and skype-name
• Revision restore (experimental)
• HTML code view for node text editor
• Link preview-bubble now stretches to the width of the link

The whole changelog of the last 3 builds can be found here, in our brand new Google Group - a mixture between a mailing list and a user forum.

Beside these client-side changes, we’ve had some radical changes in the backend. Our server now is prepared for load balancing and we’re using a new database. Especially the database should benefit us with much less “system errors” and less troubles with UTF8 and other special characters.

Feedback is, as always, appreciated - wether using the comment function in this blog, our e-mail adress mind42@irian.at, or our new Google Group mailing list.

Mind42 will be down for maintenance for at least an hour on thursday morning, 10/11/2007 = 11.10.2007 (starting ~08:30 CET). During this maintenance we’ll try to finally switch to another database in the backend, and to deploy a new version of Mind42. Since we haven’t made build 18 and 19 publicly available the new version (build 20) contains tons of bug fixes, for both client and server. The server will then use a new database in the backend which should make much less troubles with UTF8 and other special characters. The client contains various fixes which solve rare rendering errors and other bugs, but also contains new features - like autosave and skype “integration”.

If everything finally worked (this is our second try to convert the database) I’ll post details about the new features and bug-fixes.

Last Friday we’ve released a new build of Mind42. Beside many bug-fixes it includes one new major feature: Position offsets!

Noticed the new gray positioning-icon right to the nodes on mouse-over? Using this handle you can add offsets to the nodes. This means that by dragging the node down, a placeholder will be added above the node. The effect of this is, that there will be space between the selected and all above nodes, and that the selected node will move down a little. The same goes for dragging the node up a little, just vice versa. This is exactly the system Freemind uses, so hopefully many users are already familiar with this system. Of course we would be pleased to get some feedback on this!

Finally here’s a list of the rest of enhancements and bug-fixes:

• Fixed collaboration with images
• Fixed wrong rendering of children nodes after drag & drop resorting
• Fixed connection status indicator bug
• Fixed enhanced color picker for IE
• Added “Collapse All” button in the published view
• … and some other minor changes …

Feedback as always appreciated!

A new build for a new month. This builds changelog features:

• New visual style for the menu popups
• Enhanced inline editor
• IE performance enhancement
• Enhanced linking (new: Email addresses and other mind maps)
• Some bug fixes

Hopefully you’ll find the changes usefull

Something else: Rich McIver pointed me to an article called No More Hard Drive! 100 Free Software Apps to Go Online-Only. Many useful browser applications are listed there, and we are honored that mind42 is one of them.