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-   OmniFocus 1 for Mac (http://forums.omnigroup.com/forumdisplay.php?f=38)
-   -   1.7 Perspective Changes (and the thinking behind them) (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=13401)

bashosfrog 2009-08-14 09:01 PM

The blue highlights are good, but there needs to be another layer of information to tell you when you've changed a perspective, as in 1.6. Perhaps shading on the drop-down text bubble?

newguy 2009-08-15 05:01 AM

One of the issues I have with Perspectives is how it currently handles note toggling. In my custom perspective, I would like to always show notes expanded. As far as I can see you can sort of do this. By going to Edit and Toggle the Notes and then taking a snapshot of the Perspective.

The problem I always seem to have, is some of my Perspective lose this setting and the notes are not displayed. I think what actually happens is that if you have completed all actions in a Perspective and then create a new action with a Note it won't be displayed. The perspective forgets about the setting.

Given the work that being done in Perspective, is there any chance an extra checkbox that simply says restore notes could be added? This would also make it more obvious.

I have submitted this feedback to Omni. What do others think?

pjb 2009-08-15 11:05 AM

I would like notes to stay where I left them, even if the window is not active. Right now, if a note is expanded in one window, and another window opens, the note in the background window collapses.

pjb 2009-08-15 11:28 AM

Only applied when holding down OPTION to open a new window
Size
Position
Sidebar State (this might be buggy)"

What if the Perspective is opened via a toolbar button? Does the option key still work? My preference would be for all settings to update by default and a modifier be used to say "instead, just change the action list pane according to My Perspective, leave the rest of the window along, and don't actually change to that Perspective".

As for communicating the state of the Perspective, I'd prefer you just stretch the metaphor used in apps which manipulate files where the titlebar icon (next to the name of the Perspective) becomes gray and a dot appears in the leftmost button when the Perspective needs to be either saved or any changes (in blue) will be discarded. You may even go so far as to remind the user they have made changes to the Perspective when they try to change to another, although this hasn't seemed to be necessary in OW. Basically, I'm not a fan of the X on the rightmost view bar.

Also, I do not like the addition of the redundant view bar titles above the drop down menus. If there needs to be redundancy for the sake of clarity, I would rather each selection, once chosen, say "Grouped by Contexts" and "Grouped by Project" etc. (could
also use" {} Grouping: None", "{} Grouping: Contexts", etc.)


-Paul

curt.clifton 2009-08-15 12:25 PM

[QUOTE=pjb;64710]I would like notes to stay where I left them, even if the window is not active. Right now, if a note is expanded in one window, and another window opens, the note in the background window collapses.[/QUOTE]

I'm not seeing this. You might try View → Always Show Full Row Text.

pjb 2009-08-15 04:26 PM

That does it. One of the prefs I'd not changed in a long time but not saved with the move to 1.7. Thanks.

Toadling 2009-08-15 06:51 PM

[QUOTE=pjb;64711]As for communicating the state of the Perspective, I'd prefer you just stretch the metaphor used in apps which manipulate files where the titlebar icon (next to the name of the Perspective) becomes gray and a dot appears in the leftmost button when the Perspective needs to be either saved or any changes (in blue) will be discarded. You may even go so far as to remind the user they have made changes to the Perspective when they try to change to another, although this hasn't seemed to be necessary in OW. Basically, I'm not a fan of the X on the rightmost view bar.
[/QUOTE]

I don't think it's generally a good idea to use a well-known interface metaphor for something different like that. Those "dirty" indicators invariably mean the document in memory differs from the version on disk. That's not the case here; in OmniFocus, only your view settings have changed, not your actual data. Mixing UI behaviors like that would be confusing, especially since OmniFocus saves real data changes automatically.

I think the little "X" on the right end of the view bar is a better approach. It works just like the same control that appears in search fields.

-Dennis

pjb 2009-08-16 05:12 AM

But it is the data in memory which has changed from what is "on disk" (not exactly, since Perspectives are not files in 1.7). The indicators reflect the state of the Perspective and each Perspective is manifest as a window with a representative title bar. It seems like a small stretch to me.

pjb 2009-08-17 06:31 AM

[QUOTE=xmas;64628]...
The problem was that the built-in perspectives behaved very differently from the perspectives users could make.
...[/QUOTE]

I did not really use the default perspectives since I had my own already when they were introduced, so I cannot comment on the confusion they may have caused.

After a few days with the blue filters, I'm still not comfortable. The blue is a bit hard to read; how about just italics?

Why is the default non-blue set All Projects, Ungrouped, Unsorted, Any Status? When I switch to a prepared Perspective and some of the filters are blue and some are not but some of the non-blue are actually set to apply some filter, it just doesn't make sense.

I'm not a fan of using the filter text to show that one is in a Perspective. Unsaved changed to a Perspective, sure, but not any unchanged Perspective. Even among the two included perspectives, Projects and Context, only Projects has all black filters so even Contexts deviates from the default. So knowing the default is not so easy and then understanding the blue is not even possible for a novice user.

Those two included Perspectives are fine as starter Perspectives for the new user who wants to explore that feature but I would recommend encouraging the novice user to switch views using the Mode button instead until they choose to start using Perspectives.

uof 2009-08-17 04:13 PM

I'm not using the SP but have been reading the threads - I'd definitely find it distracting to have blue text in an unmodified Perspective.

I use the "no blue" as a quick safety-check that I'm not seeing a modified version of my Perspective - e.g. that could be hiding things I should be seeing...

It just feels right to click a perspective shortcut in my toolbar and see no blue modification warnings.


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