Online or cloud-synced 2-pane outliner?

Posted by dan7000
Mar 16, 2012 at 07:15 PM

I have recently rediscovered the usefulness of a powerful outliner for brainstorming, creating first drafts, and keeping track of discrete projects. I was a big ADM fan until it collapsed, and sense then have been pretty much Evernote-centric. But when I need to see an overview of how one project or document draft all fits together, I need an outline.

Like most here, I have installed most Windows outliners multiple times over the years, so I am pretty familiar with what’s out there. My current favorite Windows outliner is MyInfo because it handles rich text really well, it’s fast with good keyboard support, and it has excellent import and export capabilities. But I find myself addicted to the Evernote ability to see my data on my android tablet, my iphone, and my laptop. So I’m looking for MyInfo either as a web-based product or in a multi-platform cloud-sync format.

I have tried a number of web-based outliners, and I think they are getting there, but none of them seems to be two-pane. Loosestich, Checkvist, Workflowy, Wunderlist, etc.

I have also tried TheBrain, which has a web-synced implementation. This almost gets what I want, and I used it for a recent project, but I found that the mind map format does not let me visualize my project very well (ironically). For instance, after I had spent a couple of hours entering some things in a map with some complex relationships, I found myself looking at a complete mess of lines and text - I could only really grok the current item and maybe 1-2 parent and child levels of the item at a time. Worse, when you click on a new item, everything moves around so you have to re-visualize how everything fits together. In contrast, with an outline you can see the whole top level plus whatever branch you’re looking at all at once, and when you click on something it stays put. I tried TheBrain’s outline mode but it had the same problems. Also, export was completely unusable.

So here are my base requirements:
- 2-pane outliner. Notes pane must handle rich text; ideally also embedded pictures.
- hierarchical tree with collapsing of branches
- implemented on the web or in a format that syncs to the cloud with Windows and Android clients.

Nice to have:
- attachments
- internal links
- import from OPML or Word outlines
- export entire outline as rich text

Any suggestions would be appreciated.