Miguel Boyer

Hy Dimitry. CSS seems powerful. But is it easy to learn? In the old times of the www, and html, those CSS seemed very complicated? Is that still the case? How do we learn about such thing?

quickforld said: "Let us not fool ourselves. Saying that we want to please both groups is really saying that we do not want to make any changes that would upset any of the currently vocal users, because they are real people and we can always be skeptical and imagine that we are not 100% certain a change would make FP more appealing to new users. Do people disagree? I am open to being persuaded otherwise." From my point of view there is a third possible goal: To make the tool as advanced as possible....

Dimitry wrote: To be honest, I am not sure if Freeplane is the best choice for a typical user. Maybe it has too much power and requires too much learning for a typical user. Maybe it is a niche product, and I think we do not want to loose it as such. Aparently, quantum mechanics is fascinating. But do we want, or need, everybody to learn it? It is a legitimate question. And the realistic answer is probably no. But I'm not against dreams. So go ahead. Let's teach everybody modern physics. Dreamers...

I mean, in a nutshell: May it be that not anybody is eager to change it's digital projects into a tree, instead of a real problem with the Freeplane usability? We may be misunderstanding the real problem. Some times users hide the real motive for rejection . They may say something is clumsy, or ugly, when the real problem is their reluctance to admit that a new approach to something may be too sofisticated or too neerdy for them. let's not take the utterances of some random people at face value,...

Guys: Really, I may be a very strange person, but I see nothing wrong with the present Freeplane toolbar. It's actually pretty straightforward, at least once you understand the basics of the software and the fundamentals of the tree structure. Are we sure the reluctance of some people to use Freeplane is not about the tree philosophy, instead of the linear one in word processor, or the tabular one in spreadsheets? Maybe the culprit here with those potential users stubbornly resisting Freeplane charme...

Ribbons take a lot of space. If any one implements them, please make them optional. I don't want to loose screen space because my main monitor is extra large but not tall. Consequently, I want to see as much of my mindmaps in the screen as possible, and not a big load of program options made into some sort of huge advertising banner. If I need features I will go to menus or use keyboard shortcuts. I think that visually focussing on MY work without standing a permanent advertising of program options...

It may be the time to be totally honest: Firstly, and I don't know how he manages that, Dimitry ultimately is always right. He may not always pay attention to some detail from the beginning, but he listens pretty often, and if you make your point more clearly a second time, he may get to work on your suggestion. I'm thinking of something I tried to push ahead years ago, without success, and when I came back to it, recently, I was heard, and the thing was implemented. I also notice the same thing...

Another bit of thought about it. Truth is the basic functionality of Freeplane is pretty much accessible. The very advanced one, like extensions, scripts in several languages, programing, setting an IDE for the software, all those things are more obscure. I wouldn't devote myself to making the basic functionality easier for the newbie. Why? Because it's already easy, unless we are talking about someone that is not motivated by this software. And the truth is not every body grasps the power of sorting...