XLine

xLine can help you organize your ideas and present them in a graphical form to make them more comprehensible to others.

Likewise, it may serve as a means for a team to collaborate in a project. Although the tool can be figured out without much effort, mainly because it resembles other applications of the same type, there is no documentation to help you in case you need it.

You may start a mind map from a main idea and then gradually add subordinate ideas. For the branches, you can use different shapes, like rectangles, circles and hexagons. Moreover, it is possible to use an image loaded from an external file. Links between the ideas are created automatically and are customizable, too. For instance, you can modify the lines by adding arrows as well as changing their thickness and colors. In the case of complex idea maps, the tool allows collapsing sub-ideas to make main relationships more visible. Similarly, there is also a list of ideas you can toggle on and off to help you in this purpose.

The application lets you personalize the appearance of the whole map by changing the background with a solid color as well as custom and default images. There is also the possibility to adjust the spacing between ideas.

In spite of all its advantages, xLine is not free from drawbacks. In this regard, it is a shame that the shapes in the map sometimes change to unpredictable positions when one of the other elements is moved. I also wish that adding dependent ideas via right-clicking was also possible.

To conclude, xLine can definitely help you to manage the ideas for a project. It is also useful for creating family trees as well as presentations for teaching purposes. Good news is that the product is now free to use.