Red Badges v. Orange Badges
 

Until recently, Red Badges have been displayed for a) Actions that are due prior today and b) Actions that are due today. Orange Badges have been displayed for items that are soon, which I currently have set for 3 days.

As of the last few builds, Red badges are displayed only for actions that are overdue. Actions that are due today now are displaying Orange badges. Therefore lumping 'due today' with 'due soon'.

This change is rendering the badges far less functionally useful for me than the previous behavior. I want to 'due today' distinct from 'due soon'. There should be a preference to keep the old behavior.

- Art

This is because the default time changed from 12AM to 11:59 PM

While I agree it was nice to have the red for due today - I understand the logic of the change. If I typed due today, I mean due at the end of the day - not the first minute of the day.

I'm not sure what the pref should be. Maybe:

"Mark actions "Urgent" when overdue, or due within the next XXX"

I'd love it if Omni could build in some of these prefs and then sparsely document them and leave them out of the UI and allow those who care to modify them with defaults or using a plist editor.

UI issues and preference clutter (and QA testing) seem to be the only real reason against more prefs...

-P

If I type due today, I mean that it's due sometime from the first minute of the day until the last minute of the day. I don't mean it's due at the very last minute of the day (that would be 'before tomorrow'.

I have absolutely no interest in using due times for projects. Prior to now, I have never once entered a specific time in the due date. The change in the default will force me to enter a time (of 12:00 am) for every single action. I really don't want to do that. I could care less if the preferences are cluttered -- ideally I should not have to interact with the preferences very often. A little clutter is far better than having to add extraneous data on every single action item entered.

The simplest preference to add would obviously be the default time. Given the chance, I would set it back to 12 am.

I would like to see one step beyond:
overdue: red
today: blue
tomorrow: orange
And I do not need due times!

Absolutely! Due times are a huge burden -- they should be there for those that need them, but don't turn them into sets of balls and chains for those who don't.

Adding a third color badge would surely be a good step: recognizing Past, Present, and Future is more sensible than limiting you to only two out of three.

Changing the default time from 12:00 am to 11:59 pm inherently results in the creation of structured uncertainty.

Items that I set due for 'Today' now show up with orange rather than red badges. This means that I have absolutely no way of distinguishing 'today' items from items that may be due tomorrow or the next day, etc. So every time I see an item with an Orange badge, I experience uncertainty -- and feel obliged to check to see whether this is in fact something scheduled for today. The result is instant programatically structured anxiety.

The point is that even if I do start entering real due times (12am or whatever), every time I see an orange badge I am going to ask myself:

"Hey, maybe that's something that is due today but it's showing up orange because I forgot to override the default time?"



- Art

[QUOTE=otter;28691]Changing the default time from 12:00 am to 11:59 pm inherently results in the creation of structured uncertainty.

Items that I set due for 'Today' now show up with orange rather than red badges. This means that I have absolutely no way of distinguishing 'today' items from items that may be due tomorrow or the next day, etc. [/QUOTE]

While I actually agree with the idea of 3 colors, or having due "Today" being red. I have to point out the that same uncertainty existed before. You couldn't tell the difference between things that were overdue, or due today. However, hopefully we all have far more things due soon, then overdue - so I think the current situation is worse. You want to try and catch things due today to prevent them from being overdue.

However three colors makes it even more confusing as to which should show in the sidebar.

Its issues like this that make January 8th feel a little too soon....

-P

[QUOTE=otter;28688]Absolutely! Due times are a huge burden -- they should be there for those that need them, but don't turn them into sets of balls and chains for those who don't.

Adding a third color badge would surely be a good step: recognizing Past, Present, and Future is more sensible than limiting you to only two out of three.[/QUOTE]

Agreed. I am of the “no overdue actions!” school, so I used the red badges to quickly find those items that have to be done today. Now, no more. The uncertainty otter mentioned is there and it’s bothering me.

I vote for a third badge: Due today. Blue would be nice.

Cheers,
-Sascha

the only issue with blue as a color is it is used for singleton actions, and for the red and orange, the text color matches the badge color...

-P

[QUOTE=otter;28682]Until recently, Red Badges have been displayed for a) Actions that are due prior today and b) Actions that are due today. Orange Badges have been displayed for items that are soon, which I currently have set for 3 days.t[/QUOTE]

I wonder - weren't the red badges for "past due", and since actions were set to 12 am by default (how many users actually set or care about a time), they are past due on the day they are due.

The change in default time has affected the badge colors, not the meaning of the badges.

I actually prefer the current behavior -- I didn't like being unnecessarily stressed out by the red non-overdue items that were displayed as such. I agree, though, that a preference for the default time would be nice, as would a third color. (I'd probably vote for something in the same family -- maybe a darker red for over due, a yellower orange for coming soon, and something in between for today.) As for the assertion that

[QUOTE]I have absolutely no way of distinguishing 'today' items from items that may be due tomorrow or the next day, etc[/QUOTE]

if in context view, you group by due date, you'll see sections for yesterday, today & tomorrow (as well as further out). And, as ptone pointed out, the ambiguity in other views already existed....

The new default time for due items was much requested in other threads. I think I like it, though I'm withholding judgment for a few days. I also like the idea of three colors for coming soon, due sometime today, and late. Unfortunately we're starting to have too many colors for that to effectively communicate. Green would seem to be the only unused color in the basic rainbow. Maybe due soon could be green, sometime today orange, and late red. Those who are red-green colorblind would assuredly disagree, though not seeing with their eyes I don't know if they've already been left behind with the current color scheme.

Also, note that the default start time is still 12am. So if I enter "today" for both the start and due dates I get a task that should already have begun, but is not yet late. That makes sense to me.

Don't forget that you can group and sort actions by due date, which lets you distinguish between orange actions due today at 11:59 pm and those that are due later.

That said, I would like to see the due time be a user-customizable preference.

[QUOTE=ptone;28711]While I actually agree with the idea of 3 colors, or having due "Today" being red. I have to point out the that same uncertainty existed before. You couldn't tell the difference between things that were overdue, or due today. .

-P[/QUOTE]

For me that was a much more acceptable situation. I don't really have any interest in distinguishing whether something is 'overdue' from whether it is due today. Things that are 'overdue' are simply things to deal with today -- either by doing them today or by changing their date to sometime in the future. Any uncertainty is quickly resolved by a very short review.

Mixing today items with near-future items is much more insidious -- for one thing I typically have far more near-future items than I do overdue items, and for another I am constantly creating new action items that now (or soon will) fall into this category. Unless I am willing to vigilantly check the due times on these orange-badged items, they will represent categories that are completely untrustworthy, and therefore useless.

This situation can be easily resolved (by creating a default due time preference), and I hope it will be.

[QUOTE=sprugman;28725]
if in context view, you group by due date, you'll see sections for yesterday, today & tomorrow (as well as further out). And, as ptone pointed out, the ambiguity in other views already existed....[/QUOTE]

Which would be the way I was using OF prior to the introduction of badges.

If I am forced to do this, I might as well turn the badges off, because they have ceased to provide useful information (or to be more precise, the conflicting information outweighs the useful information ... ).

This would be unfortunate, because they are one of the better features of OF.

I prefer to spend my time doing things rather than uselessly filtering and re-filtering information -- I want to minimize kludgy workarounds for problems that don't need to exist in the first place.

[QUOTE=curt.clifton;28733]The new default time for due items was much requested in other threads. I think I like it, though I'm withholding judgment for a few days. I also like the idea of three colors for coming soon, due sometime today, and late. Unfortunately we're starting to have too many colors for that to effectively communicate. Green would seem to be the only unused color in the basic rainbow. Maybe due soon could be green, sometime today orange, and late red. Those who are red-green colorblind would assuredly disagree, though not seeing with their eyes I don't know if they've already been left behind with the current color scheme.

Also, note that the default start time is still 12am. So if I enter "today" for both the start and due dates I get a task that should already have begun, but is not yet late. That makes sense to me.[/QUOTE]

I organize my life in terms of days, not hours, minutes, or microseconds.

It doesn't make any sense to force me to care about due times when they are completely irrelevant to me.

If start dates and due times are useful to you, wonderful, but I don't want to unnecessarily want to complicate my life by devoting a single thought (or keystroke) to them.

(Off-topic:

[QUOTE=curt.clifton;28733]Green would seem to be the only unused color in the basic rainbow. Maybe due soon could be green, sometime today orange, and late red. Those who are red-green colorblind would assuredly disagree, though not seeing with their eyes I don't know if they've already been left behind with the current color scheme.[/QUOTE]

If you'd like to see with our eyes, try putting your system into greyscale mode (System Preferences > Universal Access, Display: Use Greyscale). If you can't tell the difference between two known colors because the shades are too close, then many colorblind folks can't tell either.

There's also software available to replicate what various colorblind users would see.)

I want the default time 12:00 AM back, PLEASE!!!

These Colors & Times are CONFUSING ME!
 

[QUOTE=dave1304;28687]I would like to see one step beyond:
overdue: red
today: blue
tomorrow: orange
And I do not need due times![/QUOTE]

Hi -
I like the colors, I can't figure out why they change from red to orange - it seems to have something to do with the times.......???

I would like to see more preferences as well. I do not mind a cluttered preference window if I can pick and choose how I want the program to operate for me. I would like a default to not set any exact time of day - yet, I want the option to add a time to be there for me if I need it. I would like to set my own preference to choose the colors for my actions. i.e. If it's due in one day-orange, 2 days-magenta, 1 week-purple, 1 month-green, over due, etc.

Give me preferences - I love 'em!

Sandra

[QUOTE]I would like to set my own preference to choose the colors for my actions. i.e. If it's due in one day-orange, 2 days-magenta, 1 week-purple, 1 month-green, over due, etc.[/QUOTE]
That sounds great! How about that?
[QUOTE]I organize my life in terms of days, not hours, minutes, or microseconds. [/QUOTE]
So do I and I would love to get a preference to work just with dates and not times. How about that?

I would love OF just more than today (I bought it), if those preferences would be implemented in future versions!

[QUOTE=otter;28682]Until recently, Red Badges have been displayed for a) Actions that are due prior today and b) Actions that are due today. Orange Badges have been displayed for items that are soon, which I currently have set for 3 days.

As of the last few builds, Red badges are displayed only for actions that are overdue. Actions that are due today now are displaying Orange badges. Therefore lumping 'due today' with 'due soon'.

This change is rendering the badges far less functionally useful for me than the previous behavior. I want to 'due today' distinct from 'due soon'. There should be a preference to keep the old behavior.

- Art[/QUOTE]
I second this request. It drives me crazy to now look at my work in the context or project side panel and have an accumulated count of due today and due soon. At least please allow for this to be customized. It has at least for me, rendered these badges useless. I only what to see, by project or context what I have left for today... Thanks.