Created by Lora Husu and Connie Schaeffner 
What is Bubbl.us?
Bubbl.us is a free web application that lets you brainstorm online. It is a mind-mapping product aimed towards literally anyone who needs help organizing their thoughts or any untidy information. Powered by Flash, Bubbl.us makes it easy for anyone to quickly start planning and sorting out their ideas through the use of linked text bubbles. Each bubble of information is connected to its preceding parent bubble and color coordinated accordingly for hierarchy sake. Using the mouse wheel or the side tool bar allows for easy zooming in and out of your mind-maps. Also added to the tool bar is workspace positioning and setup styles, however most will find that holding the left mouse button and dragging is a much more convenient way of moving around the work area.
How does it work?
You begin with a parent bubble. Pressing Tab creates another bubble in the same color and level of hierarchy as the bubble you tabbed from. Pressing Enter in a bubble will create a new level of hierarchy with a different colored bubble. Naturally, levels of the bubble tree are connected with lines and are movable around the workspace while remaining connected to each other. Each bubble also has an “Unpin” function. This resets all bubbles that you might have moved back under its appropriate parent. Bubbl.us also has an amusing deletion confirmation for each bubble you wish to omit. Once you press the X in the corner of a bubble a counter will begin counting down from three to zero as the line connecting the bubble to its parent acts as a lit fuse. Once it reaches zero the bubble will blow up in a cloud of fire. Neat.
How do you save and load your map?
Saving and loading is simple and fast. The navigation found on the right of the website is neatly made and holds all your current projects. Multiple brainstorming projects can be saved to folders in the side bar and loaded again at any time. Of course you’re also able to rename any of your projects using the side menu. Directly above the side menu is the link to edit your account information if necessary as well. A printing function has also been implemented so that your newly mapped out ideas can be printed out whenever you wish. They have included options for printing to the minimum height and width of your bubble tree, or simply a full screen print. Simply zoom out/in to what you feel is presentable, then print. There’s no hassle.
With bubbl.us you can:
- Create colourful mind maps online
- Share and work with friends
- Embed your mind map in your blog or website
- Email and print your mind map
- Save your mind map as an image
*Solution Watch. Bubbl.us: Simple Effective Idea Organization. Matt Wilson. Wednesday January 24th 2007. http://www.solutionwatch.com/538/bubblus-simple-effective-idea-organization/
Features:
-Add and invite friends (Bubbl.us will send you an email and automatically add your friend to your list when they join)
-Share sheets in read-only or full access mode
-Copy and paste "embed" tags into your website to proudly display your handywork online
-Copy and paste a link to your sheet into an email
-Set print area on your sheet and print away
-Covers all of Europe
-Understands Chinese and Japanese character sets
-Control panel on the right lets you manage your sheets
-Flash
-AJAX
-Prototype
-Create bubbles by clicking inside a bubble and pressing ENTER or TAB, or by clincking on handy buttons that appear where you need them
-Undo button lets you go back in time
-Minimum number of buttons and unneeded options to maximize work space
-Change bubble color
-Automatically arranges bubbles as you type
-Bubbles can be "unpinned" and positioned manually
-Use mousewheel to zoom and click and drag in an empty space to pan around
Future Features:
-Text formatting
-Auto-save every few minutes
-Different shapes for bubbles
-Adding notes to bubles
-Stand-alone application (save work on your PC)
-Sheet outliner (list of all bubbles for easy navigation & text search)
Tips and Tricks:
- To make a copy of your own sheet, load it, then change its name in the “Editing..” box next to the Save button, then Save.
- To quickly place bubbles anywhere on screen press and hold Control key, click and drag. When you release the mouse button, it will drop the bubble and go into text edit mode. If you drop the bubble onto another it will become its child.
- To connect bubbles arbitrarily (without parent / child relationship), hold Shift key, click on a bubble and drag. You’ll see a line following your mouse cursor. Drop unto another bubble to connect them together.
- To delete connections move your mouse over a line - a delete button shaped as “X” will appear. This can be tricky sometimes - you may have to move a bubble a little further away so more of the line is visible.
- Make sure your browser meets our requirements, also make sure your cookies are enabled. Our favorite browser is, of course, Mozilla Firefox.
- If your maps are fairly big and bubbl.us becomes slow: turn off effects (bottom right corner). Also, try pressing Shift+Control+Space - this toggles between Flash fonts and fonts installed on your computer - this may speed up rendering.
- When printing, you have to set Portrait / Landscape options in your printer settings yourself. Flash doesn’t allow modifying printer settings from code. That’s why we have two previews (portrait and landscape).
- When you click on a tab (Friends / Collaboration / My Sheets), the contents get reloaded. If you can’t see a sheet somebody just shared with you, click on the tab to refresh. Same applies to sheets that appear locked.
- To send somebody a read only link to your sheet (or post this link somewhere): select a sheet, click Sharing, scroll down past the Submit and Cancel buttons. You will see “Read only link to this sheet”. Select and copy. That’s your man.
- To make line breaks inside bubbles, press Shift+Enter while editing text.
- Checkbox that controls whether the announcements are displayed is in Account settings.
- You can change your username from Account settings at any time.
- You can invite a friend by clicking on a link on the very bottom of Friends tab. When that person creates an account, they will automatically be added to your friends and you will be notified by email (if you choose to).
- If you type a URL inside bubble (something that starts with http://) it will turn into a clickable hyperlink when the sheet is in “read only” mode. You can make it display a description instead of the link itself by including text inside square brackets right after the link, e.g. http://bubbl.us[Simple Brainstorming] will turn into Simple Brainstorming.
- Any sheets that were locked by you will be unlocked when you log in or log out. Also, if you close your browser or navigate away without logging out, your sheets will be unlocked after 10 minutes.
Meet the Creators of bubbl.us
Krill Edelman
- From Russia
- Comp Sci degree
- Design & develoment testing
- Personal website: www.gogoat.com
Levon Amelyan
Mon, March 19, 2007 @ 0901 | Announcements, Bugs, General | No Comments
http://blog.bubbl.us/page/4/. bubbl.us Developer Blog, News and Updates
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