Parallel and Sequential not working as intended
 

I'm using the very latest: Revision 94791

I've noticed that if I toggle a project from sequential to parallel or visa versa, nothing changes. OmniFocus treats every project as if they were stuck in parallel mode. The icon changes, and the inspector says that it is a sequential action. However I can still check off actions farther down the list and the styling doesn't change when I toggle parallel/sequential. Even more confusing, it makes the first action purple like it is a "next action" in a sequential project, even if the project is set to be parallel.

Summary: All projects behave like parallel projects and style the first action like a "next action" regardless of the parallel/sequential setting.

Did you click the "clean-up"? (I'm not on my OF machine now, so I can't test it.)

As for the "next action" in a parallel project, I believe true GTD still defines a next action. I've never quite agreed with that philosophy. Or am I thinking of something else?

Yes, I've tried the cleanup button.

I don't believe it should style the first action in the list as a "next action" when the project is Parallel, since there [B]is[/B] no "next action" in a Parallel project. I am going off of the screencast on the OmniFocus website, this is not how it is supposed to work.

How it's supposed to work:

When a project is parallel, all actions are able to be completed and all are stylized black.

When a project is sequential, only the first action can be completed and is stylized purple, the rest are grayed out and not able to be completed.

I was in the same situation. Found it!

Click on the "View" glasses.

Pull down "All" or "Remaining" in the dropdown with a check box icon and select "Available"

That's probably what you're expecting to see. It's what I was expecting to see.

Aym

Kelly: under the system you describe, there's really no need to color next actions purple at all. If all parallel project actions are black, why make the only available action in a sequential project purple?

There was a long discussion of next actions in parallel projects in the forums months ago--it started in May or June. Briefly, some of us feel pretty strongly that an action can be semantically next--i.e., it's the most important action to take in the project, or the one that's nagging us--even if any action could logically be taken next. You can reorganize actions in parallel projects by moving them up or down, to create a very flexible priority list within the project, so having the one on top designated "next" is useful to many of us.

Kelly, I had the same issue as you, but I just updated to v46.0.94800 and action styling now appears as you (and I) expected from watching Ethan's video and from the "at-a-glance" OF map. The styling change is mentioned in the release notes.