Flash browser

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

Download

• Flash browser

Installation

• Unzip the above file and save the following three files to a separate folder:

  flashobject.js 
  mindmaps.html 
  visorFreemind.swf 

• Create your freemind map and save it (ie: test.mm) to the same folder where you extracted the above three files.

• Edit the mindmaps.html file in notepad. On line 63 you will see the following line:

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

• Update this line to include the name of your mindmap file.

• Save your changes to the mindmaps.html file. Double clicking on mindmaps.html will now show test.mm in the browser.

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.

Feedback

To provide feedback, please post to:

• New version of Freemind flash Browser — discussion thread at Open Discussion forum

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/code>

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].
• Possibly, support for rich text nodes is missing; Flash browser does not show the rich text nodes that are created by the standalone FreeMind[verify].

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