XMind Review
Mind mapping tool
XMind took the open source route in 2008, changing their
business model to offer a free version of the software in the hope that it will
entice users to cough up for the Professional version. But is the free version
too crippled to be useful, or just a cynical marketing ploy? Happily the answer
to both those questions is no. The free version does without some of the
features that business users are likely to want but academics and dabblers can
probably do without. The result is a good looking and useful tool with the
choice to upgrade there for those who need and want to.
Ultimate Portability
Being written in Java Xmind can easily cover a wide variety of platforms. The
version tested was 3.1.0 and the website says that it should run on Mac OS X and
Debian/Ubuntu Linux variants as well as the Windows distributions currently in
play, XP, Vista and 7. The readme adds that Windows 2000 SP4 and 2003 are also
supported and there is an option to obtain the previous widely distributed
version, XMind 2.3, for those needing that level of backward compatibility
One neat trick that will appeal to travelling mind map users is the ability to
put your own distribution on a USB drive and run it from there. This frees you
up from your own PC and means that you can access your mind maps from any
compatible PC. This could prove a boon for those using mind maps in
presentations, releasing them from the need to lug laptops everywhere.
Getting Started
The installation and startup process is quick and simple and a couple of tricks
show that there is a commercial organisation behind this product rather than a
loose coalition. The first is that the installation offers to change the
associations on your operating system for
Freemind and
MindManager so that they
are automatically opened in the future by XMind. Some people might not like that
but it's a trick employed by Microsoft and Apple, particularly with their media
players, so it has inherent legitimacy. It certainly tells you, in no uncertain
terms, which products XMind consider to be the predominate players in the
market.
The second hint at commercialism is that on startup the package asks you for the
email address and password for your account, offering registration for those who
haven't yet joined the fold. Registration is an essential part of the
collaboration and sharing elements of XMind (and many other mind mapping
products, to be fair) but the fact that you can simply close the box and carry
on regardless is not advertised. Again it's a little sign of the commercial
heritage of the product.
First impressions
When you do decide to sign up the signup page is a little odd. There's nothing
too unusual in what it presents, fields for username, password and email and a
Captcha field. But if you use tab to move between fields, as those of us who use
a keyboard a lot tend to do, you get error messages as the web page you are
using (without really knowing it) interprets the empty fields before you have
had a chance to populate them. It's no big problem, you just get red error
messages to ignore. This is perhaps less about XMind than about getting used to
new ways of using software. These are emerging as we deal with the
offline/online shift affecting software while moving towards a permanently
online world.
The Help menu in the application leads you to a local help file accessed by a
browser within XMind rather than spawning an instance of the user's browser.
This isn't necessarily good or bad but you soon realise that you are missing the
features that you regularly use in your own browser environment. It would be
nice, for example, if the browser supported mouse buttons for going back and
forth in the browser history as we've got very used to them – XMind please take
note.
Getting to Grips with the Keyboard
As a product aimed at an academic or educational market as much, if not more
than, business users, there is added emphasis on keyboard shortcuts. It's nice
to see a direct link on the top level Help menu to a pop-up list of the most
common keyboard shortcuts. With programs like
Freemind you need to go through
the help system to find the relevant section, with XMind you are two clicks
away, maximum. And right there on the top level Help menu item there is also a
keyboard shortcut for the list of keyboard shortcuts! It's a little thing but
shows an understanding of the facilities that can make mind map construction
faster and easier, particularly for people who spend a lot of time at a
keyboard. It's also strange not seeing that thinking running through to the
registration and login dialogue box mentioned above, but in time we will have
everything.
Compared to
Freemind, another popular Open Source mind mapping application, look
and feel is much more professional and slick. Multiple browser or main map
windows are accessible in tabs like a modern browser and there is a small
toolbar on the right with icons for layout options. The configurability of the
interface is good, with moveable toolbars and the ability to hide or reveal sets
of functions depending on what you're doing to make the most of screen real
estate.
Spell Checker
Editing text in boxes demonstrates the spell checker, improved in this version
and a valuable tool that is missing from many other free mind mapping tools such
as Compendium. This is spoilt slightly by the spell check being in real time
rather than waiting for a space to indicate the end of a word. This means that
you are constantly seeing the red wiggly underline come and go as you type and
an irritating 'checking spelling' legend appearing and disappearing in the
bottom right hand corner. For touch typists this means the screen is always
flashing, very irritating. I'm not sure we need to be told that the program is
spell checking in the status bar. The red wiggly line tells you that anyway and
we can't see why users would need to be told that the application is spell
checking anyway.
This is minor fault though and there is much else to recommend the mind map
creation and editing facilitates. It is easy to stretch and drag text box shapes
to help the boxes fit into the shape of a map. Adding items in a list can be
done in a pop-up window or, by hitting F4, in a Notes window at the bottom of
the screen. Notes like this can have rich text attributes assigned to them and
internal or external links to documents and web pages.
Diagram Flexibility
When considering the layout of your map XMind shies away from the free-for-all
approach of
Compendium or the one-type fits all approach of
MindManager. XMind
offers five types of map structure and numerous versions, giving nine options to
choose from in all. Although many of them aren't strictly mind map formats that
doesn't detract from their usefulness. The project management style is in a
spreadsheet style and there is a fishbone structure too. Mind map purists might
rail against a product that forces their maps into any structure but for people
just beginning to find out the power of a properly arrange map, a form to follow
makes the process less scary.
The great thing about XMind's approach is that you can change the format at any
time. Select the origin of the chart, click on the properties icon on the right
hand toolbar and then select a different type of chart from the 'Structure' drop
down box. It's easy and it's also a great indication of why the different types
of diagram exist. Changing our simple test project plan from Spreadsheet to
Fishbone (Right Headed) demonstrated exactly why a fishbone structure simply
doesn't work as a tool to manage a project at task level. But XMind's
flexibility means that if you think your structure choice is wrong, you can
simply try another one.
Get Moving Quickly
In pure brainstorm mode the traditional mind map style is offered and the
keyboard shortcuts come into play again. Populating a map from scratch takes a
little getting used to but works well after a few minutes of playing around and
looking at the help file. Using it for a novel structure was frustrating as the
chapters kept jumping out of order until the 'Map (Clockwise)' structure was
discovered. Once that was applied everything fell into place and the chapters
resumed their correct order.
All mind map users know that you start a map thinking it will fill out a certain
way but then it grows exponentially in the most unexpected directions. XMind
provides a number of ways to deal with that. For overall management of different
diagrams XMind is similar to Excel, with workbooks and separate sheets. Given
the numerous different formats of map this works well in that you can place a
traditional mind map, related fishbone diagram and an organisational chart for
the project team all in the same file, on separate sheets.
Of course you can link nodes on one sheet to other worksheets just as easily as
external sources or those on the web. It's worth pointing out here that these
different formats can be mixed as well, so, for example, a child of a
traditional mind map format can be a fishbone diagram. The different formats can
even exist on the same sheet, although as the screenshot shows, this can be less
helpful than you might think.
click for larger image
As the maps grow use can be made of the Drilldown and Drillup features, a quick
and easy way to bring sections of a map into focus then come back up for the
strategic overview. As with nearly every other XMind feature it can be activated
from a menu selection, a mouse click or the ubiquitous keyboard shortcut, in
this case F6.
Collaboration and Sharing
As with many other leading mind map products collaborating and sharing of maps
is the big growth area, in terms of features if not usage. After eagerly
uploading our first test map clicking on the button to 'see your map now' was a
bit of a disappointment. The internal browser took us to an 'oops' page,
although copying and pasting the url into Firefox did show that it was actually
there. Uploaded maps can be featured on the XMind site and there are links to
push them out to all the usual social networking sites as well. Maps can be
commented on and you can look up the person responsible for uploading any public
maps (private maps being a Pro feature). As it was just a small test map we
immediately wanted to remove it from the XMind website. We are still trying....
perhaps it's in the Pro version?
Free or Professional?
All of which brings us neatly to the issue of the free version versus the
Professional upgrade. XMind Professional may well be worth purchasing for
business users because the extras are largely to do with linking into other
productivity tools and processes. You can integrate your mind maps into an
organisation with Gantt chart views, the Presentation modules and the ability to
share maps with a restricted audience. There are productivity tools like a task
information tool which hooks into the Gantt view, something that project
managers would need to use if XMind were to be used as a full-on project
management tool.
More Images / screen shots
Click for larger pictures
There are more export options with XMind Professional as well. The free version
will produce maps in HTML and a variety of graphic formats but it's only in the
Professional version that you’d be able to export to PDF, Microsoft Office
formats as well as other mind mapping products such as
FreeMind and
MindManager.
You also get more features to help merge maps or isolate sections of them for
distribution and there are look and feel enhancements like a clip-art gallery,
audio note attachment and theme creation and management. XMind makes it easy to
upgrade as the package is the same and unlocking the professional features is
done by changing your online account rather than the software.
Conclusions
As it costs nothing to have a go, anyone considering mind mapping software would
not be wasting their time with XMind. It is a well produced tool with a
professional look and feel. The only thing that lets it down in this regard is
the proliferation of spelling mistakes in the product, the help and on the
website but then it is a Chinese product so that is understandable.
It is obvious from the start that XMind is a commercial company offering a free
version as an enticement to sign up to the paid version. This allows a different
approach to a pure open source hobby project such as
FreeMind or an
institutional approach as with
Compendium and the user is the winner.