In MindPlan there are two different modes to change the position of a node. If you want to change the order of nodes, click on the center of the node and drag the mouse:

While dragging, you can see small lines and triangles that show you possible insertion positions:

A completely different thing is our relative node positioning, which was added in MindPlan version 2:
There is a small icon at the top right of a node. When you position the mouse over it for a while, you can see a hint how to use it:

For each node we store an x/y axis indentation relative to the parent and sibling nodes.
The result could look like this:
If you've completely messed up your map by playing with the relative position, there is an easy way to reset some or all positions.
Select a few nodes and click on this menu actions:

We couldn't find the time to integrate those two modes into a combined mode so far.
When version 2 came out, we discussed this top right icon and compared the idea with a keyboard shortcut (e.g. relative positioning when Alt is pressed while dragging).
The decision to include this extra icon was based on the high demand of our customers to have relative positioning in the map. So we wanted to have something obviously new in the graphical user interface, because not all users like to read the documentation.

If you've got a better idea, feel free to post it here in the blog!
We also get support calls because users try to change the order of nodes by using the relative positioning. So I guess both ways are not optimal.

Karsten Lehmann | June 19th, 2008 12:08:18 | Comments (0) | Permanent Link