MindMeister 4.0: New Features!

Please note: this article was last updated in 2010. For the latest information on MindMeister product updates, please visit our blog homepage at focus.meisterlabs.com

Chances are, you’ve probably noticed a few changes to your MindMeister user interface over the past few days. This is because we’ve packed a bunch of new updates into our newest version release: MindMeister 4.0.

There have been a number of helpful suggestions from our users, and while we haven’t crossed them all off the ‘To-Do’ map, we’ve incorporated a number in this release, and plan on rolling out additional features over the next few months.

What’s New?

Map Themes

One of the most requested features in our recent User Survey was the ability to color and theme maps. We’ve now added the ability to change not only node and text colors, but backgrounds as well. Users may select one of our 12 predefined maps, or customize their map with any number of color combinations. If you’ve got one you think we should take a look at, please let us know!

Stats, Reports, and Backups

Team Edition users are now privy to a host of administrative features. Included in the MindMeister 4.0 release are usages statistics and activity reports. Administrators of Team Edition accounts can find these reporting features listed under the ‘My Team’ tab, and now have access to a birds-eye overview of team activity. Currently, we provide user data on: who’s logged in, most active users, and number of maps per user.

Back It Up!

Another high scorer on our User Survey, MindMeister users indicated that they’d like an option to back-up their mind maps. We’re introducing this service to team edition (Business and Academic) users, who now have the option to backup all mind maps of team members to a configurable external location. Administrators may specify how often and in which format these backups should take place, and can access them via any SSH FTP connection.

As mentioned above, we also have more reporting features in the works. If there’s a feature you’d like to see included, please let us know!

Configurable Sidebar

Let’s face it, not everyone is working on a 30” Cinema Display (sadly, we’re not either). We discovered that a number of MindMeister users were doing a lot of unnecessary scrolling and clicking just to access and open the Sidebar widgets. We’ve worked a bit of code magic behind the scenes that now allows users to drag and drop Sidebar widgets wherever they choose. Use attachments quite a lot, but not the Navigator? Drag that Navi down to the bottom, and drop the Extras section up top!

New User Interface

As mentioned above, we’ve introduced a new user interface. We’re going for a cleaner, streamlined, more ‘business-like’ design, and have paved the way for even more user-requested features (did someone say folders?). We’ll be adding these new features piece by piece over the next few months.

You might also notice the lack of a certain pink motif. While the pink will still remain as part of our overall logo design, we’ve started to phase it out, and are replacing it with a lighter shade of blue.

As with all of our releases, we’ve checked and re-checked the system, but if you happen to find any issues that we should be made aware of, please let us know!