#### # Welcome to FreeMind | #

FreeMind is a premier, free mind-mapping program written in Java.

FreeMind will let you organize your ideas as a "mindmap," a graphical structure of nodes and branches (or edges) attached to a central "root" node.

For a quick look at a fully developed mindmap, click here.

Want to write a completely new metaphysics? Why don't you use FreeMind? You have a tool at hand that remarkably resembles the tray slips Robert Pirsig described in "Lila," his sequel to "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." Do you want to refactor your essays as you would refactor software? Or do you want to keep an easily managed personal knowledge base? Why don't you try FreeMind?

You can easily create, move and format nodes and edges. Features include:

- Easy control of folding, or the ability to display or hide all information below a selected node. This is the essential property of FreeMind.
- Fast one-click navigation, including folding / unfolding with one click and following links with one click at the same time (you don't have to make choice between fast following of links and fast fold/unfold). You can move the map by dragging the map's background as well as using mouse wheel.
- Fully functional following of HTML links stored in the nodes, be they WWW links or links to local files.
- Smart Drag and Drop, including the ability to copy nodes or copy the style of nodes; dragging and dropping of multiple selected nodes; dropping of text or lists of files from outside.
- Smart copying and pasting into, including pasting of links from HTML or structuring the pasted content on the basis of the number of leading spaces in a line; pasting of lists of selected files.
- Smart copying and pasting from, including plain text and RTF (MS Wordpad, MS Word, MS Outlook messages).
- Export of your map to HTML, with folding.
- Find facility, where found items are shown one by one as you do "find next", and the map is unfolded only for the current item.
- Short nodes, or long multiline nodes with line breaks.
- The option to decorate nodes with built-in icons, colors and different fonts.
- Low cost of switching away to another mind-mapping tool, because FreeMind stores maps in XML format.
- File mode enables you to browse the files on your computer, seeing the folder structure as a mindmap.

Read on to learn the details.