Fluent Brain

This post is part of the Message To Mindjet series. If you haven’t read the introduction yet, I explain why I’m writing these articles.

In part 1, I am listing bugs I found in Mindjet MindManager 2012 version 10.0.445. By bugs, I mean things that the software does that it is not supposed to, or things it doesn’t do that it is supposed to. So I’m not referring to crashes, errors, exceptions or faults. Fortunately, I didn’t find any of those!

To read this post, you can simply scroll down or go to one of the sections listed here:

• Closing A Map In Which I Opened A Document Pops Up A Warning
• The File Browser Stays Open After Closing Its Parent Map
• The File Icon Doesn’t Toggle The File Browser After I Close It
• The YouTube Video Keeps Playing After I Close The Browser
• The Default Theme Is Not Applied To A New Map From The Hyperlink Dialog
• Losing The Content Of An Unconfirmed Topic When Undoing
• No Undo or Redo On Notes
• It Is Not Possible To Close A Map With Ctrl-F4 When Over The Tabs
• The Color In Color Picker Sometimes Needs To Be Selected More Than Once

Closing A Map In Which I Opened A Document Pops Up A Warning

This is a behavior new to MindManager 2012. Here is a test scenario that demonstrates what happens:

1. I create a new mind map;
2. I add a subtopic, and attach a new file to it. I’ve tested it for Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Text formats. Since I cannot edit the text file within MindManager, the issue doesn’t occur with this kind of document;
3. I edit the file by adding some content to it;
4. I save the file and close the file browser window;
5. I save and close the mind map;

And I get this warning pop-up:

It seems that there is no way to avoid this window if I opened a document in the mind map.

This leads me to two other bugs with the document window.

The File Browser Stays Open After Closing Its Parent Map

This behavior is also new to MindManager 2012. Was it added on purpose? I find it illogical to keep the file browser open for a file contained in a mind map that is now closed. If I want to keep that document open, I’ll open it outside of MindManager. Besides, I can only have one document open at once in the software, so I don’t see the use of this. This brings me to the conclusion that it is a bug.

Here is the test scenario:

1. Using the same test mind map as above, I open the attached file;
2. I close the mind map;

The file browser stays open.

The File Icon Doesn’t Toggle The File Browser After I Close It

Here is the test scenario:

1. Using the same test mind map as above, I open the attached file within MindManager (in the file browser) by clicking on the attachment icon next to that topic;
2. I close that file browser;
3. I click on the file attachment icon again.

It doesn’t toggle (open) the file browser again. In order to toggle it, I need to press Ctrl-Shift-F1, or click the Browser tab on the right side of the screen. I’m hoping this is just a bug, because it makes no sense to me. When I create or view my mind map, I want to be able to click on that attachment to open it, and not have to select the topic, then open the browser. It requires additional and unwarranted effort.

The YouTube Video Keeps Playing After I Close The Browser

Here is the test scenario:

1. I create a new mind map;
2. I add a subtopic;
3. I add a hyperlink to a YouTube video on that subtopic;
4. I click on the hyperlink icon to open that webpage within MindManager, and the video starts playing;
5. I close the browser;

The result is that the video keeps playing.

Actually, the problem is the same for any webpage I open within MindManager. When I close the browser, the instance of that webpage is still running as if I didn’t close it. Obviously, my intention by closing the browser is to effectively close that webpage -- at least in most cases.

I can see how you might end up opening the same hyperlink to a webpage more than once while working on a mind map. However, I find it extremely annoying that closing the browser has no effect, and I don’t see the use of keeping a window running in the background after closing it. Again, if I want a webpage to remain open, I’ll open it outside of MindManager.

The Default Theme Is Not Applied To A New Map From The Hyperlink Dialog

When I create a new map with Ctrl-N or with the “New Blank Map” icon, it has the default theme. It is not the case when I create a new map from the hyperlink dialog box. Here is the test scenario:

1. In any mind map, I select or create a topic, then open the hyperlink window with Ctrl-K to add a hyperlink to a new map I’m about to create in that window;
2. I select the “New Document” tab on the left;
3. I type a name for the new mind map, I keep the default extension (.mmap), I change the destination path if needed and click OK;
4. I open that new map by clicking on the mind map icon next to that topic.

The theme of this newly created map hyperlinked to the previous one is not the default MindManager 2012 theme. Rather, it is the old theme from MindManager Pro 7.

Losing The Content Of An Unconfirmed Topic When Undoing

Here is the test scenario:

1. I insert a new topic;
2. I type text in that topic, and make changes to what I just typed -- without confirming the text entry;
3. I undo by pressing Ctrl-Z to cancel that mistake;

At that point, I expect the rest of the text I entered to remain, and my mistake to be cancelled. However, the whole text of that topic is deleted as if I never typed anything in it. In essence, the software un-does the text entry operation.

No Undo or Redo On Notes

Undo and redo do work inside of topic notes, but not for the operations of adding or removing a topic note. So if I add or delete a note, I can’t undo (Ctrl-Z) nor redo (Ctrl-Y) that operation.

It Is Not Possible To Close A Map With Ctrl-F4 When Over The Tabs

If your mouse is positioned over one of the tabs of open files in the bottom of the screen, pressing Ctrl-F4 to close the currently open mind map doesn’t work. If the cursor is anywhere else, it does. I find this bug particularly strange! I’m sure this would be easy to fix, though.

The Color In Color Picker Sometimes Needs To Be Selected More Than Once

It happened to me several times with this version of MindManager, but as I’m writing this post, I cannot replicate this bug. Were changes made to the color picker? As far as I know, the problem occurs for all color tools -- font color, fill color and line color. Has this happened to you?

In Part 2, we will cover needed usability improvements about…  Creating the map Basic operations Formatting the map Menus, tabs and windows Shortcuts Indexing and printing