Are you happy with how task notes are handled?
 

As I'm testing this app and deciding whether or not to make the switch from iGTD, one issue that is persistently troubling me is OmniFocus’ approach to task notes. If I clip an email into OF, it shows as a task with no display of the note. If I want to see the content of the email or the link to it, I have to click on the tiny Note icon in the right corner of the line. Then everything is beautifully displayed, but within the task list display.

I’m not arguing this was a good or bad design decision. I can see why some would prefer this paradigm. But I've grown accustomed to the iGTD paradigm of a separate Notes display under the task list, and that as soon as a task is highlighted in the task list, any notes are auto displayed along with any links. For me, a great many of my tasks come from emails. I’d say, conservatively, at least a third. I find myself constantly looking at a task in OF and thinking “is this an email based task? Do I have notes I need to see for this?” then I click on the Note icon, and sometimes I get notes, sometimes I find it’s a task without notes.

For MY workflow (again, I'm not trying to impugn the app), this is highly inefficient. Takes me much longer to really view all I need to see about a task, and then when I do view notes, having them display within the task list now ‘crowds out’ the other tasks in the list, pushing them off the display.

The more I use OF, the less I like this behavior. This alone might be enough to keep me with iGTD, frankly. I know some would hate it but I'd far prefer to display notes automatically in a separate pane along with any links to files, emails or websites and not have to hit a small greyed out icon to see what I need to see. This paradigm seems, to me, to underemphasize the importance of what Notes can mean to a task.

Just my two cents.

[QUOTE=rmathes;25660]I find myself constantly looking at a task in OF and thinking “is this an email based task? Do I have notes I need to see for this?” then I click on the Note icon, and sometimes I get notes, sometimes I find it’s a task without notes.[/QUOTE]

I find the in-line display of notes adequate. I haven't used iGTD, so don't know whether I'd prefer a separate note display.

A couple of items for living with OF's notes:

The note icon only appears for actions that have notes, or when you hover the mouse over the row with a note. Is that not what you're seeing?

Also, with an action selected you can press Cmd-' to toggle display of the note.

honestly, never noticed. The note icon is so small and difficult to see in the first place that this behavior never was apparent to me.

But it doesn’t matter.

This handling of notes is fundamentally problematic for me. SO many of my tasks are so note-centric that having to do this to view and deal with them is just one more way OF makes me work in an inefficient manner.

I agree. There should be an option to automatically display the notes, when an item is clicked.

HOWEVER. You should be able to see if there is a note there already. Items with notes already attached display the note icon. Items with no note attached have the icon dimmed grey (clicking on the grey icon allows you to add notes).

I also agree, there should be a better way to handle notes. Even double clicking on the task to expand the note would be a help but also something like an expand all and a conversion option to make a note into an action would be nice.

I have used iGTD in the past, but I prefer the layout of OF much better. As far as auto expanding note, etc., it might be possible to have that as an option, but for me, that gets in the way for me. I have a lot of tasks and projects I have to manage, and I really don't want to see any extraneous stuff in my main view including notes . . .

If I need to see what's in the note, it's only a click away, and I don't have to select the task to see what's in the note anyway. So, I can quickly browse all the tasks with attached notes one by one.

I also switched from iGTD (and from kGTD before that), where I found all the fields and options more distracting than useful.

I actully like how notes are managed in OF: using the shortcut mentioned by Curt to show a note (CMD-'), and CMD-4 to move from the sidebar to the main window, it's very fast to focus on a particular action and the corresponding note.

The only thing that I miss is a shortcut to open a note without editing it (using CMD-' can be annoying if a note is longer than the window height, as the cursor is at the end of the note).

[QUOTE=iBsteve;25687]I also agree, there should be a better way to handle notes. Even double clicking on the task to expand the note would be a help but also something like an expand all and a conversion option to make a note into an action would be nice.[/QUOTE]

Select all (Cmd-a), then Expand Note (Cmd-').

Optional notes window
 

I don't have a problem with the current display as far as it goes, but I'd prefer to be able to (optionally) open a task or a project into a separate notes editing window in front of the main window. Ideally, this window would remember it's size/location from previous viewing. I typically have a good bit of information in notes and the current display is problematic for me in a couple of ways:

1. If you have a lot of text in notes, the window size that best fits your project and task display may not fit your needs for notes display. The need to resize the window disrupts workflow, particularly if you're looking into the notes for a quick reminder.

2. If you want to copy text between task notes, or more likely, between project notes and task notes, the current display is awkward. The ability to display different project/task notes in multiple windows at once would be helpful.

3. As I've said before, I commonly use links to files and folders on disk. The current handling of dragged-in links in the notes fields is inadequate.

I agree that the current iGTD display is distracting and I wouldn't want that as a default. There has been discussion of separate notes windows for iGTD2, and I'm interested to see how that pans out.

[QUOTE=curt.clifton;25698]Select all (Cmd-a), then Expand Note (Cmd-').[/QUOTE]
Thanks Curt! Very useful. Still would like to double click, but this is good.

"You can't always get what you want but if you try sometime you get what you need."