Google 1: MindMup 0 - or why there won't be a Chrome MindMup App

More than a month ago we set out to build a Chrome packaged app for offline access, and at this point we're declaring defeat. At the end, we could not find a way to get the Google Drive API to play nicely with the Chrome App security policies and the Google JavaScript Client API simply doesn't work in a Chrome application. We expected that, considering everything comes from Google, this will be pretty straightforward, but it turned out that it's not. We spent too long trying to work around all the quirks and issues and magic, so we'll cut our losses and move on. 1:0 for Google.

If the API changes we'll revisit this. The problems in the API were reported by other users, some even last June, and are still unresolved, so this doesn't really give us confidence that things are moving on the other end and that those problems will be fixed any time soon.

Auto-saving

MindMup now automatically keeps all pending (unsaved) changes to your maps in the local browser profile storage. If you suddenly go offline, close the browser window, or the machine crashes, the changes will not be lost. The next time you open the same map, MindMup will ask you to apply or discard the pending changes. Choose "Apply" to continue working where you left off. Choose "Discard" if you want to throw away the previous changes and go back to the previously stored state, or if you've changed the map and saved from another browser meanwhile.

The storage in browsers is limited to 5MB in total for a web application, so this won't work perfectly in case of huge images. MindMup will show you a warning if it cannot save the changes, so you know when there is no safety-net.

Your votes count!

If you like MindMup, please vote for us in the LifeHacker best MindMapping tool survey

Damjan talks about our experiences building MindMup

Damjan, a key developer of MindMup, gave a presentation on our experiences building MindMup - the presentation is mostly focused on technology aspects and learning, especially JavaScript. See the video.

PCWorld reviews MindMup

PCWorld just published a nice review of MindMup. Read it here:

www.pcworld.com/article/2032818/review-mindmup-is-a-free-effortless-way-to-create-mind-maps-in-moments.html

Nodes can now have rich text and image attachments

 

MindMup now allows you to attach rich formatted text and images to your nodes. For more information, see the documentation page on Working with node attachments.

We've even opensourced the editor component separately, so you can use it in your projects.

Can UserVoice help the community engage better?

Thanks for so many votes and such great feedback over the last three months. We're looking into ways to allow the community to engage better in a discussion on the future direction of MindMup. Our voting forms so far have provided nice ideas, but they are one-way only, and don't allow people to see what others are voting for or comment on that. This is why we decided to give UserVoice a try. UserVoice is a system that allows people to provide better feedback. As of now, the voting link on MindMup leads to our uservoice forum.

We'll run this as an experiment over the next few weeks, and if it creates a better community engagement, we'll keep it. With the free version, each user gets a total of 10 feature votes. Don't worry about spending that, if the experiment works we'll convert to a full version with unlimited voting.