[robmclarty]

The interface was a complete mystery to me. I clicked and dragged and hit enter and gave up. I read the manual and discovered the insert key (although I don't have one on my mac laptop) and then used tab. But I need to use my mouse to click on a node and then tab and then back to mouse and tab... seems awkward. Could you make it so i can just click and drag from a node to "pull out" a new node and have that default to have focus so i can just start typing?

With any of these sorts of programs, I think it's good to keep the pen and paper interface in the back of your mind. If it's easier/faster/more intuitive to use pen and paper, I think there's still some work that needs to be done on the interface ;)

[ondras]

The UI is designed (and battle-tested) to be controlled mainly via keyboard. Mouse is mostly useless (but somewhat supported for non-power users).

You definitely shall not toggle mouse/kb in an infinite fashion; stick with the keyboard control instead - use arrow keys for navigating around.

[robmclarty]

Then I guess my question is this: why is a mostly visual interface/representation mainly controlled by non-visual means? To me, a mind-map is not a "power user" tool and is used for organizing loosely understood ideas in hopes of getting a better grasp on their domain.

IMHO it should be something easy to play with, move things around, unstructured (in the sense that a user's stream of ideas won't necessarily be coming into the program in a structured way; the point of the program being to structure them), and be able to make many corrections and revisions. The goal of the tool should be to take unorganized thought and mould it into a comprehensible hierarchy that can be used to communicate ideas to others.

[noiv]

Using insert for childs, enter for siblings and arrows to navigate seems kind of a standard among mind maps. I had no problem at all. Using the mouse only slows down the mind to map process.