If you press the Enter key twice after typing in topic text, the program will save your topic and open another one at the same level of your mind map. The program supports other keyboard shortcuts for quickly adding topics to your maps. If you click on a blank area of the workspace, then XMind displays commands for changing the map’s background, map legend and other making other map-level adjustments.Ĭreating and manipulating map topics in XMind is very straightforward: You can add topics using a toolbar command, the program’s drop-down “insert” menu or using the insert key – the de facto standard for many mind mapping programs. XMind’s dialog boxes are context sensitive if you select a topic, tabs that are appropriate to tweaking the appearance of topics are displayed.
It can be used to depict a series of activities in a time sequence, and how the whole project is impacted by different milestones on the schedule. The fishbone diagram format makes XMind especially unique to be best of my knowledge, it’s the only mind mapping program that’s capable of producing this type of diagram, which is used for cause and effect analysis. XMind supports a variety of fishbone, radial mind map, organizational chart, tree and logic chart formats. The program is designed with extensive support for right-click commands, which I really like, because you can accomplish common tasks within the map workspace, eliminating the need to make trips to the program’s main toolbar and the tabbed sidebar (please click on the image above to view a larger version of a typical map produced using XMind 2008).
When you first open the program, you’re greeted by a clean interface that conforms to most of the popular norms of mind mapping software today: a horizontal toolbar above the workspace and tabbed dialog boxes to the right of it where you can handle many common tasks, such as changing topic shapes and colors, adjusting topic text font, style and color, changing the map’s structure. One of XMind’s biggest assets is its ease of use. With the release of XMIND 2008, its developers have created a very impressive mind mapping program that will please newbies to visual mapping as well as experienced mappers with its ease of use and amazing flexibility.
In doing so, they created an excellent alternative to FreeMind, the popular open-source mind mapping application that leaves much to be desired, in my opinion. Last year, the developers of XMind stunned the visual mapping world when they decided to offer a free, open-source version of their mind mapping software.