Flash browser

There is a GNU GPL licensed Flash browser for FreeMind. Download it (50 KB), unzip the archive, and read readme.txt, or double click mindmaps.html.

Download

• Flash browser in a SourceForge patch - heading "Attached File", hyperlink "download"
• Flash browser at efectokiwano.net - seems broken now

Instead of downloading Flash browser separately, you can export Flash browser from FreeMind application; see #Menu.

Installation

• Unzip the above file "freemindFlashBrowser.zip" and save the following three files to a separate folder:
  • flashobject.js
  • mindmaps.html
  • visorFreemind.swf
• Create your FreeMind mind map and save it to the same folder where you extracted the above three files, e.g. under the name "test.mm".
• Edit the "mindmaps.html" file in Notepad or your favorite plain text editor.
  • Change the line 63 containing

    fo.addVariable("initLoadFile",getMap("freeMindFlashBrowser.mm"));

  • by replacing "freeMindFlashBrowser.mm" with the name of your mind map file.
  • Save your changes to the "mindmaps.html" file.
• Double clicking on "mindmaps.html" should now show your mind map file in the web browser, which in its turn should contain the flash browser embedded.

Documentation

There are the following documentation resources for Flash browser:

• readme.txt, delivered with the Flash browser
• http://www.efectokiwano.net/mm/ - a mind map that documents Flash browser, viewable in the Flash browser. To view the documentation, follow the link, and in the main mind map that gets shown, follow the path "mindmaps > FreeMindFlashBrowser > Info", which loads another mind map, the documentation one.
• freemindFlashBrowser.mm -- a direct link to the mind map that documents Flash browser
• mindmaps.html -- an example HTML file that loads the Flash file

Version

The latest version of the Flash browser is 1.0b.

Version history of the Flash browser:

Release date	Version	Note
2007-10-01	v1.0b
2007-04-09	v1.0a
2007-04-08	v99
2006-09-14	v98
2006-01-31	v97
2006-01-19	v96

All the release dates are estimated from the dates of release announcements in this thread.

Feedback

To provide feedback, please post to:

• New version of Freemind flash Browser — discussion thread at Open Discussion forum
• "Praise to FreeMind flash browser", Open Discussion forum; please post your praise dedicated specifically to the Flash browser here

Menu

• File > Export > As Flash ...

The flash browser is also exported by FreeMind using the mentioned menu item.

Troubleshooting

If the Flash browser is working but it shows an empty map, see if you can load your freemind file in a webbrowser. I had to rename the .mm to .xml (and adapt the .html) because my provider won't serve file of which the mime type can't be inferred. It didn't know how to handle mm-files and instead showed a 404 error page.

For an "Apache" server, adding the following lines in the "htaccess" file may resolve the problem:

AddType application/x-shockwave-flash swf

AddType application/x-freemind mm

If your mindmap is called, for instance, "work_map.mm", change its name into "index.mm": it will work. How do you know that it will work for the user? What is the explanation of the problem and the solution?

If you encounter the error "Flash plugin or Javascript are turned off.", check the following:

1. Verify that the latest version of Flash is installed, and Javascript is enabled.
2. Verify your version of Flash. If you have version 10, and have an older copy of freeMindFlashBrowser.zip (pre Oct 2008) installed, there may be an issue with your version of flashobject.js (See the message in the Open Discussion forum for more details. To fix the issue, re-download the Flash browser and update your copy of flashobject.js.

A user's note: The browser works fine. I tried to put all FreeMind related files (.mm, .jpg) in a subfolder "data" and changed the line to

fo.addVariable("initLoadFile", getMap("data/index.mm"));

and everything worked fine, except images. After editing the .mm files and adding "data/" to all image URLs everything worked fine again.

Limitations

• Possibly, support for images in nodes is missing; Flash browser does not show the images that are shown by the standalone FreeMind[verify].
• Rich text nodes shown as plain text: Flash browser shows the rich text nodes that are created by the standalone FreeMind as plain text, showing no boldface, italics and other rich text formatting.
• Limit on the number of nodes: Flash Browser v1.0b is unable to display mind maps with more than 1004 nodes.[1]

Source code

The source code of Flash browser is stored in CVS, in the latest version v1.0b.

• Source code of the flash browser in CVS
• CVS - flash browser - source/visorFreeMind/Main.as, showing changes on Oct 1 2007 in its revision history

Authors

The author of Flash browser for FreeMind is Juan Pedro.

See also

• Flash browser in action with documentation of the flash browser (at efectokiwano.net)
• Source code of the flash browser in CVS
• Macromedia Flash.
• New version of Freemind flash Browser — discussion thread at Open Discussion forum