5. Managing the map

This section describes everything you can do with maps itself in Mind42 - How you can manage, publish, rollback, delete maps and so on.

5.1 Loading and deleting maps

Loading and deleting mind maps happens within the mind map manager in Mind42. It will be opened automatically when launching the application and is reachable via the "open" button in the left menu bar of Mind42. The manager is split-up into 3 sections: "Saved mind maps", "New mind map" and "Import mind map". The "New mind map" section was already covered in section 2.1, so now we'll concentrate on the section "Saved mind maps" where you can manage already existing maps. This section will show you a list of mind maps, one map per row, including a thumbnail of the map, its name and some data like the last change to the map. You can load the map just by clicking the name or the thumbnail of the map.

To delete the map just click the red minus circle to the right of the map name. By clicking it the icon will be replaced by a confirmation question where you finally can decide to delete the map.

The list in general could be divided in two sections: "My mind maps" and "Shared mind maps". The first one contains all maps you've created. The second one contains all maps where you have been invited as a collaborator. Although also the maps in the shared section have a delete icon, you can't actually delete these maps. Only the creator of a map can delete a map. If you have maps in the shared mind maps section you can only remove them from your list by clicking the delete icon.

The maps on the map list can be sorted in 3 different ways. By default they are sorted descending by the maps last change date. This means that the maps you've worked most currently on are on top, which allows you to quickly access your current projects. But you also can sort by date of creation of map name, ascending or descending using sort menu. To reverse a currently applied sorting (ascending/descending) just select the same sorting category again.

Also it's possible to search within all of your maps (own and shared maps). This could be especially handy when you already have a long list of maps, and need to find an older one. Just click the search icon and enter parts of the searched maps name into the input field.

Info: The map name Mind42 uses for the map list can't get entered somewhere. It automatically takes the text of the root node as the mind map name.

5.2 Importing maps

The last section of the Mindmap Manager is the import section. It only consists of a file upload field and a button. You can just select one of the supported file types with the file selector and upload it. Every uploaded map will get imported as a new map for your account. We currently support the Mindjet MindManager XML format, the Freemind XML format and our own Mind42 XML format.

Please keep in mind that every mind mapping application has a different feature set. Every application uses different icons, different layouts, different types of attachments and so on. Therefore a map imported from another application will loose some information during the import. Most probably the layout will be completely lost since Mind42 only has the automatic layouting mechanism as described in section 3.2. For all the other attributes we continuously enhance our import module - so if you're missing an attribute, which should get imported, please just send us a description using the mail form

5.3 Exporting maps

As you can import maps, you also can export them. The button to open the export dialog is in the left menu bar beyond the regular save icon. Export is possible to the formats Mindjet MindManager, FreeMind, Mind42, RTF, PDF, PNG and JPEG. The first two formats are the XML formats of two classical desktop mind-mapping applications. Like for the import from different applications it also applies to the export to these applications that some data can get lost - especially formatting.

The Mind42 format is a proprietary XML format we developed for backup purposes. Using this format no data of the Mind42 mind maps will be lost.

Tip: Using the Mind42 format to export/import maps you can practically copy a map: Just export the map and re-import it without deleting the old map. It's also possible to move a map to another account like this: Just import the map at the other account.

The RTF format is a little bit different. Instead of trying to preserve the form of the map it really only takes it structure and converts them by using headings for the node levels in a text file. Any available node texts (see section 3.4) will be used as the body of this text file. Like this it's very easy to use a mind map as a basic structure for any text to write. Of course most of the other attributes will be lost in this export format.

The PDF, PNG and JPEG exports are perfect for printing and inserting mind maps into documents. Using PDF you can easily print your map, although the current PDF export is only a rough implementation. The PDF is not vector based (meaning that the printout can't be scaled up without loss of quality) and it is only a one-page documet (meaning that the PDF document is as large as it needs to be to fit the mind map. It does not take care of actual paper sizes). PDF export will be enhanced in the future. PNG and JPEG on the other hand are good formats to including your map on a web page, or in a presentation or text-based document. While PNG is the better loss-less modern choice, we also offer the classical lossy JPEG so that everybody can open the file.

5.4 Saving maps

As you've probably already figured out there is a "Save" button to save the mind map in the left menu bar. What you maybe haven't found out is that there is the keyboard shortcut "Ctrl-S" available for that. You have to save your map before closing the application - we don't save after every change or so - we really only save when we get a save request. But there is an auto save function. By default this will save your map every 5 minutes, but you can configure the auto save interval in the settings dialog. You'll find the settings dialog on the top right corner of Mind42 (the wrench icon).

Additionally we not only save your map when pressing save, we also archive the previous version as a so-called revision. So with every save you create a revision, which you can later access and even restore if necessary. More on that in the next section (5.5).

5.5 Viewing and restoring older revisions

As mentioned before in section 5.4 every mind map save will archive the previous version of it as a revision. Like this you can always go back and look what was changed, and if necessary even restore the old state. This functionality can be found in the revision dialog. To open the revision dialog click the little clock icon in the top left corner of Mind42.

Info: You can only show and restore older revisions if you are the creator of the map - if you are only a collaborator you won't see this icon.

After you've opened the dialog you'll see a list of revisions. This list is ordered chronologically descending - so from top to bottom the revisions are getting older. You'll see when these revisions were saved and who saved it. In the rightmost column you'll find an icon to load a revision. When opening a revision it will look like a normal map on the first look, but actually it's read only - you can't edit the map. You only could edit this state if you restore the map. In the top left area of the map view you'll find a link to restore it. Restoring a map means to copy this revision to the front of the revision list. As seen before in the revision list, revisions are numbered and ordered chronologically. By restoring a revision a copy of the revision gets created, and put on the top of this list. The previously saved state will be "overwritten" - of course it's still available as a revision.

Tip: When showing an old revision and you want to leave this revision just open another mind map or open the revision dialog and open the top most revision.

5.6 Publishing

Another way of sharing the map, besides exporting it as an image, is to publish it. For published maps Mind42 provides a read only view of the map. When a map gets published you'll get a link to this view, and some code snippets, which allow you to integrate this view into other web pages or to link to the view. The publish dialog can be found behind the antenna icon in the top left corner of Mind42 (like the revisions dialog this is only available if you are the creator of the map). Within this dialog you only have a single checkbox which you have to click to activate publishing. After you've published it you'll get the mentioned links and snippets.

The advantage of this read only view is that it's interactive. Like within the Mind42 application the map is drag gable, zoomable and collapsable. Also all the links and attachments work contrary to an exported image. The disadvantage is, that this view still requires a lot of JavaScript to work, and therefore can slow down a webpage if it gets integrated. On the other hand, when only using the URL to this published view you get all of the advantages you are used form Mind42. It's on online application, which is available from wherever Internet is available and it only needs a browser without any plugins.