b. Expanded View

Expanded View is similar to a traditional mind map. When you choose View > New Expanded it will display all the visible thoughts and try to arrange them in a parent / child relationship. You can mouse over a thought and show or hide child thoughts or parent thoughts by clicking the + or - sign that appears.

If you move a thought, it will "pin" the thought to that location which appears as a filled in dot below the thought name when mousing over the thought. clicking the dot will un-pin the thought and allow it to move and adjust in relation to others again.

Activating a thought that is visible on the plex will show all previously hidden child, parent and jump thoughts. However, unlike Normal view, it will not hide the non active unrelated thoughts. 

If you use instant search to find a thought in another area of your database and activate it, that thought will appear in the plex as well as it's parent and child thoughts in a slightly different area. The thoughts from a different area will not be hidden.

You can move the entire map on the plex by dragging any area of the plex that doesn't have a thought on it. You can also increase or decrease the space between related thoughts by scrolling.

This view is very useful when you want to explore or visualize relationships. For example, viewing organization charts, or a process workflow. 

Expanded View is also very good for brainstorming as no information is hidden when you create a new thought, and you can link and unlink thoughts to other thoughts easily.

Finally, you can save your expanded views, as well as load saved views and delete views from the View menu.