Software for creating writing project dashboard with links to files

Posted by Dr Andus
May 30, 2013 at 09:07 PM

It’s been an old dream of mine to find a software that could be used as a dashboard for everything, or if not for everything, then at least for the most important writing projects. Mainly I want to be able to organise and re-organise links to files on my drive that pertain to specific projects.

The problem with everything I tried is that a) after a while a single page gets too crowded or b) it is too convoluted to link to files and rearrange items, or c) it is visually difficult to consume.

So far I tried WhizFolders, Planz, “hubs” in SmartDraw 2012, ConnectedText, VUE, and CmapTools.

The main criteria would be:
- light enough for it to start quickly (I’d want to have it open automatically at Windows start-up and keep it open);
- drag and drop of any file from file explorer creates a link to the file (ideally with an icon of the app and the file name);
- easy to rearrange, collapse, zoom in and out of branches.
- easy to duplicate branches.
- alternative visualisations (e.g. outline, mind map).
- internal linking between items;
- ability to add additional icons, colour-coding, highlighting.

I’ve just started using Freeplane for this today, and it seems to tick a lot of the boxes above. It’s a bit slow to start, doesn’t add the file icons, and you can’t zoom (hoist), but can do all the others. Besides the drag and drop of file links it can also link directly to internal ConnectedText (and other) documents, which is great. But it’s early days, as I don’t know how easy it will be to navigate once it has over a hundred links.

Any other suggestions for such a dashboard software?