Mind Map Software TutorialUsing Mind Map Manager to Draw Mind MapsCreating Mind Map Web PagesCreate Mind Map from a simple description in less than a minute |
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Mind Map Software Tutorial.Installation of Mind Map Manager.Download the Mind Map Manager archive. Unzip it in the directory where you want this program to resign. When specifying options in your Winzip software, make sure that all subdirectories (subfolders) are restored. Usually it is the default setting for the WinZip. Installation is complete. Uninstallation of Mind Map Manager.Delete the folder containing the Mind Map Manager files. Registration of Mind Map ManagerIf you choose to register the Mind Map Manager software, you will need to enter the password (provided after the registration) into the registration prompt. Draw Mind Maps: Getting started.
Run the FuzzyMap.exe and click the "New" icon on the toolbar. The new (empty) chart file will be created. On the left, you can see the tree control, representing the map in easy to edit form. The yellow icons marked "L" are used for the branches on the left side of the map, the red icons marked "R" - for the right side branches. Draw Mind Maps: Change StylesThe Mind Map Manager's toolbar on the top contains so called styles. All styles are located in data/styles.sty file. Do not delete it. You can select any style from the drop down list. For example, on the screenshot above, the "Presentation" style is selected. The style contains up to ten levels, each level corresponds to the level of the tree. The first level describes the root item of a tree ("Hypnosis" on the screenshot above), the second level describes the children of the root and so on. In Mind Map Manager you can make changes to the styles that are used in a mind map - they will be immediately reflected in the tree. To add a new style to a a mind map, click the "+" button on the toolbar of a Mind Map Manager. You will be asked to enter a style name, and then a new style will appear in the drop down list. To delete a style, click the "-" button on the toolbar. Draw Mind Maps: Edting BranchesEach branch of the tree in our mind mapping tool has name (the text) and the URL. You can enter them using the fields of the toolbar at the bottom of the Mind Map Manager's window. Please keep in mind, that the changes will apply to the currently selected branch of the tree. You can enter more than one line of text for the branch - use the RETURN (ENTER) as you would usually do in a text editor. To apply changes to the branch, click the "Update" button on the Mind Map Manager's toolbar. Draw Mind Maps: Zooming the Mind MapThe size of a mind map is calculated automatically, however, sometimes you may want to change it. It is especially useful, when you are printing the map, as the size of a page is usually different from the size of the screen. Use the "Zoom" spin control to adjust the size of a map. Draw Mind Maps: Editing the Mind Map TreeIn addition to using Mind Map Manager'stoolbars, you can edit the tree through the tree control on the left of the mind mapping tool window. The control has the following functionality: the right-click menu, with Insert and Delete items and the Drag and Drop. To use the right click menu, simply right click on a tree item and select the operation you want to perform. To Use Drag and Drop, you have two choices. You can drag the tree item to the new location - in this case it will become a child of the target item. Or you can do it while holding down the SHIFT key, in this case the tree item will be inserted BEFORE the target item. Exporting mind map into image formatsFrom the main menu of a Mind Map Manager, select File - Save As Bitmap, Metafile or PNG. The first two choices will simply produce a disk file, containing the picture. When you choose to save a PNG file (PNG is recognized by all major Browsers and for all practical purposes is the same as GIF. Except, GIF is copyrighted, and PNG is free), the second file, containing the image map is creaded. If you only need a picture, simply ignore the image map. Using Mind Map Software to create Image mapsWhen you are saving a PNG image, two files are generated. First, as you can expect, is a PNG image file. And the second is an HTML file containing the image map. What is an image map? To see an example, move your mouse cursor over the following image (the code was copied from the HTML file generated by the program and inserted into this page):
When you move the mouse cursor over items of the map, it changes its shape. If you click, your browser will take you to the web site that this areas of IMAGE MAP are pointing to. They are the same locations I provided for branches of the tree in the URL field of the toolbar at the bottom of the program window. You can, of course, use both absolute path (starting with http://), relative path to the file located on the same site (like index.html), or even file path to the local files. The image map is just an HTML code that you can paste in your Web page, which means mind map web pages are now available. It is referencing the image (for example, if you choose Save As PNG, and enter the site_map.png as a file name, the two files will be created: site_map.png and site_map.htm). Simply open the site_map.htm in the text editor (Windows Notepad will do) and copy the code, except for opening and closing tags. Once again, if you don't care about URLs, and just want to save the image - ignore the site map file. That's it! You officially graduated and are now qualified to draw the Mind Maps using Mind Map Manager program. Congratulations!
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