NovaMind Software released NovaMind 5 for Mac last week, which has been rebuilt from the ground up with many innovative new features that no one else on this platform offers. This new version represents the most significant upgrade to NovaMind for Mac in its history.

Here’s what’s new in this innovative mind mapping program:

Because a lot of the changes have to do with map design flexibility, we’re going to take a closer look at those new capabilities in particular:

New layout engine: NovaMind 5 for Mac has been rebuilt with the same layout engine as the Windows version of the program, which makes very efficient use space and automatically repositions topics to minimize wasted space. NovaMind goes further than this, and allows you to arrange the subtopics of any topic either linearly or radially, at any angle – all while keeping the mind map automatically in the most compact format possible. In addition, NovaMind allows you to move any topic to where you want it, while still ensuring that topics don’t overlap each other and maintaining the compact layout.

Automatic design support: Many users of mind mapping software don’t want to mess with styling and coloring topics. They just want to be able to capture and organize their ideas quickly, and create a beautiful-looking mind map with a minumum of hassle. NovaMind 5 for Mac enables with a number of design support systems that operate quietly in the background as you build and edit your mind map. In other words, apart from setting things up the way you want them to start with, the colors and shapes and layout of the topics is automatic.

The first tier of this system is themes. Themes provide an overall design for the mind maps, and are made up of a series of settings that apply to topics, callouts, floating topics, and shapes. The theme system allows you to change the overall look and feel of your mind map in a single operation, while keeping any custom settings you have added. And any new topics you add to your map adhere to the theme settings.

Each theme comes with a color set, which defines a set of colors that are designed to go well together. These color set colors allow you to create great looking mind maps even if you don’t have an artistic bone in your body. If you want to experiment with a different look, you can just change the color set that you are using, and all the colors change to their equivalent colors in the new color set. The same applies for font sets, so with a couple of simple changes in settings, you can update the look of your mind map, while maintaining design consistency.

The next level of automatic design support is automatic coloring, which includes theme-based coloring, as well as “rainbow coloring” and a completely new concept, called array coloring – where you set up an array of colors, and NovaMind cycles through them for the children topics. This means you can do things like having subtopics colored in alternating colors, or cycle through three or more topic colors automatically. I’ve used the rainbow coloring in NovaMind 5 for Windows, and really like it a lot. I’m pleased to see that the developer has taken this idea one step further with array coloring (also available in the latest version of NovaMind 5 for Windows) – which gives you much greater control over the appearance of your mind maps.

NovaMind 5 for Mac also allows you to design a topic the way you want it to look, and selectively get the subtopics to inherit the shape, fill, or line settings, to again automatically set the design of the topics you have added. It even automatically colors the text so that it uses light colored text if the background it is drawn on is dark, and dark text if it is on a light background. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve recolored topics in other mind mapping programs, and then have had to recolor the text because it blended in too much with the topic’s color. It’s great to see that NovaMind’s development team has this handled!

Redesigned topics: NovaMind has redesigned everything about topics, too, in version 5 to give you another level of freedom in customizing the look of your mind maps. For example, you can now have up to 4 images on each topic (which are positioned using a very clever quadrant indicator), multiple hyperlinks and attachments per topic, 10 different topic types plus custom topics where you can change the shape of your topic to create something completely unique. And you can make it more interesting by using the gradient fills, shadows, reflections, glassy look, texture images and more.

You can attach free floating shapes, images and text to topics. There is no need for the topic to finish at the topic boundary – you can enhance the topic with as many shapes as you like. They can be in front of or behind the topics, and can either push other topics out of the way or float behind or in front of the other topics. All the shapes can have text and images on them, allowing you an incredible amount of flexibility to enhance your topics.

iCal integration: NovaMind 5 for Mac now enables you to synchronize checkboxes in your mind map with to-do items in iCal and tasks with events in iCal. It allows you to use the full features of iCal, such as setting alarms, and sharing calendars in order to keep up to date with tasks, which can be particularly useful for businesses using NovaMind.

Cross platform support: The Windows and Mac versions of NovaMind 5 use the same file format, and same license keys, but the programs themselves are developed using native technologies on each operating system, to provide the best user experience. For instance, the Windows version uses the Ribbon bar, which is familiar to Windows users, while the Mac version uses inspectors and toolbars which are familiar to Mac users.

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion support: While NovaMind 5 will run on MacOS X 10.5 and 10.6, they have come right out of the blocks with full Mac OS X 10.7 Lion support, with built in support for Resume, Autosave, Autosave in place, Versions, and Full Screen mode. In addition, NovaMind plays nicely with other applications, importing images from iPhoto, Aperture, and Lightroom, contacts from Address Book and links to Mail messages.

There are three editions of NovaMind: Express, Pro, and Platinum, designed to suit the needs of customers from individuals and schools, through small and medium sized business right up to large businesses.

NovaMind 4 users have been waiting for NovaMind 5 for quite some time, but the wait appears to have been worth it. NovaMind 5 for Mac (and Windows) are light years ahead of version 4. The development team continues to show a lot of innovative thinking that is reflected in practical, time-saving features and intuitive operation. Specifically, the program is designed to look after the layout and graphical design of your mind maps automatically – so you can concentrate on the content.

For more information about NovaMind 5 for Mac, please visit the developer’s website.

Here’s what’s new and improved in NovaMind 5 for Windows:

Full screen mode: The NovaMind Pro and Platinum editions add a full-screen editing feature, which hides the toolbar and footer to give you more screen real estate in which to edit your mind maps. This should be especially useful for those of you who frequently work with large mind maps. If you’re operating in full screen mode and need to access a command on the ribbon toolbar, you simply move your mouse cursor to the top edge of the screen, and the toolbar slides quickly into view. When you’re done with it and mouse away from it, the toolbar slides back into hiding. I tried this on the big flat screen on my home PC, and it really does make the workspace appear to be much more spacious. I may use this mode for any complex mind maps I create in NovaMind 5 from now on.

New detail levels: The latest update of NovaMind 5 adds a set of controls that enable you to quickly adjust how many levels of your mind maps are being displayed. Your choices include showing only the first level of topics, the first two levels, show all levels of subtopics or collapse a topic. Each of these new toolbar commands has a corresponding Windows hotkey (for example, show only the first level of topics is Shift+Alt+1), so you can quickly change your view of your mind map without touching your mouse. You can also use another hotkey to toggle through each level setting until you find one that meets your needs.

Focus in: As part of the detail level controls, NovaMind 5 for Windows now enables you to “focus in” on a specific topic – which expands the selected topic and collapses all others. There is no focus out command, because NovaMind is still displaying your entire mind map, but with only the currently-selected branch open. As you may know if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, I’m a big fan of the focus in/focus out capabilities of certain mind mapping programs, because it enables you to remove all other distractions from view and concentrate on the topic you’re currently trying to develop. If you’re ADD like I am, this feature is quite valuable. Unfortunately, NovaMind doesn’t remove the rest of your map from the workspace, but only collapses the other branches.

When it comes to zeroing in on a topic in your mind map, NovaMind distinguishes between focus and hoist. In their view, focus in is when the currently selected topic and its children are expanded while all other topics are contracted. Hoist, on the other hand, is when only the currently selected topic and its children are visible in the work space. According to NovaMind founder Gideon King, his development team decided to implement this functionality using the former technique, because it retains the context of the currently-selected topic by showing its siblings in relationship with it. One of the big drawbacks of hoist, according to Gideon, is that you lose the context surrounding the current topic.

Also, because of the map layout engine NovaMind employs – in which you can position topics wherever you want and to have different layouts at any point in the topic hierarchy – coming back out of a hoist state and once again displaying all of the topics in their correct position would be very challenging, he added.

Find and replace: NovaMind 5 now enables you to find and replace text in your mind maps, and gives you a nice set of options to control how this new functionality behaves. For example, you can tell it to “look in” all open documents, the current document, selected topics or the selected map (a NovaMind document may contain more than one mind map, in tabbed pages). You can also use a pair of check boxes to restrict your find and replace to topic text and/or notes. I tried using this on one of my existing maps, and found the find/replace dialog box to be initially a little confusing. At first, I only saw one form field, with “replace” and “replace all” buttons next to it. Normally, a find and replace command in a software program has two form fields – one for the text you’re looking for, and the other, of course, for what you want to replace it with. Upon closer inspection, I finally noticed that there was another form field above the replace field, but it completely spans the width of the dialog box from right to left, and I didn’t even see it was there at first. There’s some text sitting in it that says “type here to start a search,” but I thought it meant to type in the form field below. If this first form field was a little shorter, it would be easier to see. This is a minor usability detail, however.

Improved image handling: As you know if you read my review of NovaMind 5 when it was first released, I really liked the way the program enables you to easily add images to your topics, using an innovative four-quadrant selector (see example at right). The developers have improved the functionality of this aspect of the program to make it even more versatile. If you drag and drop an image to a new topic that doesn’t have any text, the program removes the text box completely and tiles the image across the shape of the topic.In addition, the quadrant selector now has a new box above the upper left quadrant (see image at right), which enables you to easily attach an image to the currently-selected topic as a shape.

In NovaMind 5, shapes are powerful layout elements that are attached to topics but are not part of them. Shapes have a number of unique qualities, including the ability to overlap the topics to which they are attached, and to be in front of or in back of the topics. Shapes can either be part of the layout of the topic, pushing other topics out of the way, or be floating independent of other topics, allowing you to overlap a shape with other objects.

The best way to explain shapes is to say that they behave like visual annotations of a topic, enabling you to alter the shape of it and make it more interesting and meaningful. Some examples of what you can do with shapes in NovaMind 5 are shown above right.

For more details on other improvements to NovaMind 5 for Windows, please visit the NovaMind Blog.

Conclusion

While none of the enhancements and new functionality are in themselves earth shattering, the cumulative effect of NovaMind continually upgrading the program’s capabilities is a big win for users of this innovative program.

If you already have NovaMind 5, this update will be available for download the next time you open the program. If you haven’t made the move to NovaMind 5, perhaps now is the time!

Key improvements include a new map layout engine that makes more efficient use of screen real estate, shapes that give you new options for embellishing your map layout and a new plug-in architecture that will make NovaMind very extensible. For a sneak peek at NovaMind 5, please see my blog post about the preview of it that I got in September. I look forward to trying it out this week.

NovaMind founder Gideon King cautions that this technology preview isn’t quite at a beta test stage yet, so it doesn’t include all of the features and functionality that the final shipping version of NovaMind 5 will contain.