Talk:Main Page
The scope of this talk page: This page is for remarks on the content of our main page and wiki. Please address your questions on FreeMind itself or request for help with using FreeMind to our Help forum.
This page is for:
- Feedback on the usability of FreeMind wiki,
- Requests for missing information in the wiki.
This page is not for:
- RFEs -- feature requests,
- Feedback on the usability of FreeMind application.
First impressions of the wiki
My impression of the wiki is quite good. So far, we can let the original home page running, together with the one at freezope. I will move most of the stuff from the home page to wiki, as well as from the wiki at freezope. Any failure of this wiki is, therefore, covered. We can switch to this wiki completely in the near future. -- Dan of FreeMind 08:32, 10 Sep 2004 (PDT)
Logout problems ("Save page" button previews instead)
Can an admin read Running MediaWiki on SourceForge and ensure the sessions directory is setup correctly? As of August 2005, SourceForge no longer allows write access to the htdocs directory and instead requires writing persistent data to /tmp/persisent. Changing this directory should fix the logout problems (just try to edit a page to see what I mean). --Shellreef 15:19, 7 Sep 2005 (PDT)
- That was very helpful; thank you. The sessions of MediaWiki should work fine now. --Danielpolansky 12:03, 8 Sep 2005 (PDT)
I have made a very simple navigation bar, repeated at every page to which it points. The navigation bar points only to the primary pages. Secondary pages can be reached by following the link "All Pages" at the navigation bar.
Originally, I wanted to change the navigation bar at the very left, but MediaWiki's documentation disclosed that this is only possible by editing the monobook skin's template. As this is not very flexible, I've chosen the other option, although it's not very elegant.
The navigation bar content is located at Template:Navigation_bar. By changing the template, the navigation bar changes in all the pages where it is included. See also help on templates. --Danielpolansky 11:08, 14 Sep 2004 (PDT)
Where is toolbox defined for the wiki
At templates/xhtml_slim.pt, with user rights rw-timan72,r,r.
The speed of Mediawiki
Currently, there are no problems with the speed of Mediawiki that we are using. We are running on mySQL 4.1.x.
I have enabled file cache (see help on file cache). It also simplifies backing up of the wiki, as it suffices to backup the pages in the file cache. But the wiki is still very slow. --Danielpolansky 11:21, 27 Sep 2004 (PDT)
- If performance continues to be a problem, you might consider moving this MediaWiki to BerliOS (another free software host). Their MySQL is much faster than SourceForge's in my experience. --Shellreef 14:17, 7 Sep 2005 (PDT)
By logging to SQL server, I have found out that SourceForge is running mySQL version 3.23.58. Thus we may not set that we are running version 4 in LocalSettings.php. --dp
$ mysql -u freemind --database=freemind --host=mysql -p
An easier way to find out about mySQL version was to visit this special page of this wiki.
Mediawiki's image thumbing capability is not that good
In the main page, there are several screenshots scaled down manually in Gimp. They are not stored in the wiki internally; they're only referred to from within the wiki. When I first tried to use images internally, taking advantage of Mediawiki's thumb function, it did not work at all because of the PHP's GD libary missing. The library is now there, but, when scaled down using GD, the thumbs do no look that good . Thus I keep the screenshot images as they are, i.e. external to wiki. A demonstrating example follows. --Danielpolansky 10:26, 8 Apr 2005 (PDT)
- GD is infamous for its poor thumbnailing. Consider installing ImageMagick instead. --Shellreef 14:26, 7 Sep 2005 (PDT)
Can't we use multistage resampling for thumbnails? What I mean is: when the image is 8x larger than the thumbnail, resample it to be 4x larger, then 2x, then of thumbnail size. This way, the filtering is done during each step and the "moire"/aliasing pattern is diminished a bit.
--Kfoltman 21:21, 20 Mar 2007 (EST)
To get help on using mediawiki
See Editing Overview (pointing also to Extended Image Syntax), documentation on customizing the interface of the wiki, Style Guide and the User's Guide for wiki usage and configuration help.
Why we chose MediaWiki rather than other wiki engine
MediaWiki has buttons for formatting a cursor selection when editing, lessening the memory burden of a new user. MediaWiki allows for editing of single sections of a page, and has an elegant automatic table of contents for each page, created out of the sections. It has a separated pages for article and for discussion. MediaWiki distinguishes graphically inner links and links going outside. Furthermore, MediaWiki supports TeX markup for mathematics. MediaWiki is the wiki engine of Wikipedia, successful free internet encyclopedia. Thus MediaWiki seems to be one of the best free wiki engines available.
Some how too's would be nice
i was playing around, I imediately thought of mapping some complex (poorly designed) websites, software etc. I want a quick tutorial on /if i can do this... thanks FUN STUFF
HOWTO's and Documentation
I mentioned this in an e-mail to the OpenDiscussion forum, but I believe a HOWTO section and Documentation section are in order. These sections should have links above the current "Asked Questions" link on the main page.
The HOWTO section should contain a list of HOWTO's that are written/updated the Freemind community (it's users), and the Documentation section should be a well organized layout of the information contained in the HOWTO's, but explicitly controlled by the site-administrators.
My $0.02, Bobby
- For help with understanding mind mapping or idea mapping I really like Idea Mapping by Jamie Nast and she just blogged about Freemind in her blog Idea Mapping Blog also there are examples on her site Idea Mapping Success of idea maps done with FreeMind.
Feedback
Very intresting wiki site!... Thanx! --HarryRens 16:56, 15 Oct 2005 (PDT)
More alternatives
You might want to add Compendium ([1]) to the Alternatives. Compendium is a tool similar in intent to mind-mapping software, but it has a different map structure and a different underlying philosophy. Compendium is free to download and use, although the project people request that you register before downloading. It is not open source, however -- you must register as a developer to get the source and can not re-distribute it. Like FreeMind, it's in Java.
For general brainstorming, discussion capture and personal knowledge base organization, I don't really have a strong preference between Compendium and MindManager/FreeMind. I've used MindManager much longer, and I haven't used either in a corporate brainstorming/discussion session, just for my own personal work. If you're doing project management I'd recommend MindManager, since it integrates with Outlook and Microsoft Project. But I'm leaning towards Compendium as a personal organization tool for a couple of reasons:
1. It runs on both Windows and Linux. I think it runs on MacOS as well, being in Java, but I don't have a Mac to test it.
2. The underlying philosophy is geared towards brainstorming, discussion and knowledge organization. I think it's a "mini-ontology editor".
More Commercial mind mapping programs
It would be great to add more mindmapping programs. Such as ConceptDraw MINDMAP http://www.conceptdraw.com/en/products/mindmap/ It's very good and old software and it worth to be listed.
And XMIND ( http://www.xmind.org/ ) It's very popular in China now, and soon in the whole world.
Some usability suggestions
I think it would be nice to have a link pointing to the usual SourceForce project page somewhere inside the left navigation. This way things like forums, mailing list archive and the usual boring stuff can be accessed without typing a URL manually (currently, either it's not there or it's buried too deep for me to find). The other way would be to provide direct links to forum archive pages, mailing list page and so on. Or just assume these don't exist, because of mildly worn-out looks of default SourceForge interface ;)
Another suggestion for addition as a complementary tool for use with FreeMind
Would you consider adding 3D Topicscape (http://www.topicscape.com/) to the alternatives list? In some ways it's not just an alternative but a complement to FreeMind, because it can now import a FreeMind .MM file (tested with 0.9.0 Beta 8) and make a 3D mindmap, or export a topicscape to a FreeMind file. And it can do a round trip. When a FreeMind map gets very large, it offers an alternative to breaking the map down because it allows much more to be seen at one time than on any 2D mindmap. There's a screenshot of a FreeMind mind map produced by exporting a Topicscape used to plan and collect information for a research project here: 
(The screenshots were stitched together, otherwise less than a third could be seen on a 1920x1200 screen.) There's a screenshot of the original Topicscape here: 
I like using mind maps to plan projects, but when projects get too big, a (pseudo-)3D view can show you much more at one time than a flat 2D mind map. You can fly, instantly zoom in, and change the node around which your 3D scene is built to examine it from many angles.
