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Freemind: Click2try™ Tutorial
Freemind: Click2try™ Tutorial
Freemind
Freemind Copyright20082009PresageTechnologies,LLC. You may freely distribute or publish this content provided you publish the content in its entirety and include all existing copyright notices, attributions, links, and acknowledgements to click2try, Presage Technologies, LLC. and to organizations mentioned explicitly or implicitly herein.
Freemind
Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................... 5 Creating a New Mindmap .................................................................. 6 Inserting Child Nodes ....................................................................... 6 Inserting Sibling Nodes .................................................................... 7 Adding Hyperlinks............................................................................. 8 Linking Two Nodes.......................................................................... 10 Inserting a Note.............................................................................. 12 Formatting Nodes in Clouds ............................................................ 13 Formatting a Mindmap .................................................................... 15 Exporting a Mindmap ...................................................................... 17 Resources ....................................................................................... 18
Freemind
Freemind
Introduction
If youre still wondering what the big excitement is about mind-mapping, its probably because youve never tried Freemind. Freemind, besides being free, gives you an incredible range of capabilities that go far beyond just brainstorming. Of course, if you want to brainstorm, Freemind has everything you could hope for in a creativity tool. But, Freemind doesnt stop there. With its ability to embed links, dates, and files, Freemind becomes the perfect tool for research, project planning, and for documenting things like your network or your system resources. Just how can Freemind help you? Ease-of-use improves your problem-solving success rate Makes brainstorming fun Collaborate and communicate easily Capture and organize seemingly disparate data Get a big picture view Collect data in one document
In this tutorial, youll learn some of the basics of using Freemind. Although youll learn even more when you dive in and play with the tool yourself, this tutorial will help you learn more about: Creating mind maps Creating and inserting nodes Inserting hyperlinks Inserting notes Formatting mind maps Exporting mind maps
Once youve tried Freemind, youll be searching for projects to brainstorm, plan, and document! NOTE: A note on terminology. The terms mindmap and mind map tend to be used interchangeably, not only on the Web, but within many mind mapping applications themselves. In this tutorial, the variant youll see most often is mind map in two words. Freemind features often include the single word variant, so you may see those in headings or in descriptions of specific commands.
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Freemind If you have child nodes with child nodes, youll likely want to add sibling nodes too. Keep reading to find out more about sibling nodes.
Freemind
You can select any node and add child or sibling nodes to accommodate as many details as you want to capture. If your ideas or plans are equivalent to the main child nodes, such as Calculate sizing data in this example, then select the Build Network oval and insert a new child node.
Adding Hyperlinks
The ability to add hyperlinks is one of the most powerful features of Freemind. You can link to documents, websites, and to other types of local files. To add a hyperlink: 1. Click one of the nodes to select it. For example, click the Create preliminary design node. 2. Right-click and select Insert > Hyperlink (File Chooser). This opens the file browser dialog. 3. Select a file you want to link to, and then click Open. You may need to change the file type at the bottom of the file browse dialog to All Files. By default, the dialog only shows Freemind files. After you link the file, an arrow appears next to the node containing the link. 4. Click the arrow to open the file. You can also enter a link manually, if you like. This is especially useful when you want to link to a known website.
Freemind To add a manual hyperlink: 1. Click one of the nodes to select it. 2. Right-click and select Insert > Hyperlink (Text Field).
3. Enter the location you want the link to point to. It can be a Web page, an FTP site, a local network share, or some other external or internal location. In this case, the hyperlink points to an external Web site. 4. Click OK to save the link.
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The black dot next to an item identifies the option that is currently selected.
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Inserting a Note
As you develop more detailed maps, youll most likely want to add notes to different nodes, either as reminders to yourself or as notes to other employees who will be viewing the map.
To insert a note: 1. Select a node you want to add a note to. 2. From the main menu, select Insert > Note. This adds a note icon to the node and opens the note editing window at the bottom of the Freemind screen. 3. Enter your note text. 4. When finished, move the cursor back up to the main mind map area, and the note editing window closes.
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Thats it. You can also format nodes to appear in bubbles which are rounded rectangles. And there are many formatting options available, such as using any of the many icons Freemind offers to uniquely identify your nodes.
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Formatting a Mindmap
There are many ways in Freemind to format your mind maps and the nodes and connectors of your mind map. Lets walk through a few of those formatting options.
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Freemind 2. Right-click and select Format > Bubble. This formats the selected node in a rounded rectangle. You can also change the color of the border and the background.
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Exporting a Mindmap
Freemind lets you export to a variety of formats that make it easy for you to share your mind maps. You can export to graphics formats, such as JPEG and PNG, to document formats, like PDF and OpenOffice.org Writer format, or to HTML and XHTML and XSLT. To export a mind map: 1. 2. 3. 4. With a map open, select File > Export. Choose a format. Select a location and provide another file name, if needed. Click Save.
The file will open in whatever application you have on your system that supports the file type you selected.
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Freemind
Resources
For more information about Freemind, see the following resources: Freemind http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page Main wiki page on SourceForge, contains lots of information and links to the download site, additional resources, reviews, and much more. Freemind FAQ http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Asked_questions Dozens of common questions and detailed answers about how to install, run, and use Freemind. Freemind Accessories http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Forums Third-party plug-ins and add-ons for Freemind. Freemind Forums http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Forums Main index site to several forums about Freemind.
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