I’m still using the previous version of Mac OS X and that’s why I can’t use MindNode yet. In March I’m going to switch to Leopard which is supported by MindNode.

I’m still not able to use MindNode Pro but I assert you that I need it. Because I can’t tell you much about MindNode I show you how to make mind maps with OmniGraffle which isn’t well suited for that. Hopefully I can even take part of the lottery to win a license for MindNode Pro.

Creating a mind map in OmniGraffle isn’t made as intuitive as in MindNode. If you compare the video with the screenshots of MindNode it’s clear that OmniGraffle isn’t optimized for mind map creation but MindNode does.

Visually Appealing Mind Maps

There is no need to spend hours playing with the visual attributes to create an appealing mind map. The default values are suitable for most uses.

Well this holds for MindNode but not for OmniGraffle at all. As you will see in the video it’s not so easy to make the mind map good-looking.

Full Keyboard Support

Although MindNode really shows its strength when used with a mouse, nearly all interactions can be performed very easily with the keyboard.

OmniGraffle also support actions through the keyboard but I don’t know them all. So I can’t tell you which one of both supports keyboard actions better than the other one.

Expanding Canvas

The mind map is not restricted to the size of a page. The canvas resizes automatically in the background to fit the mind map.

OmniGraffle definitely doesn’t resize automatically. I’m not working that much with OmniGraffle but I think there’s no way to dynamically resize the canvas, MindNode does.

I’ve took several looks at the feature list but there’s nothing about a function about printing a node by right-clicking. I think it’s useful to just print the child nodes of a selected parent node as a check-list.

Example: If I had created a mind map for several todo lists for my job, my travels and maybe for shopping. If I’m going for shopping one afternoon I just need my shopping list. It would be nice to right-click on the child node and just print the list. Ok for this purpose I could create three seperate mind maps. Although I’d like to use this feature if it’s implemented.

Video: Creating mind maps with OmniGraffle

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cqm5bdzcwo

Screenshots of MindNode