OmniFocus v1.6 sneaky peeks!
 

What are sneaky peeks?

Sneaky peeks are our latest (unstable) internal builds. These internal builds are exactly what we see here at Omni: they're just snapshots of our development that are updated every few hours and haven't gone through any sort of vetting process—which means that you might actually be the first person to try a particular build and discover that it eats your system. (I hope that doesn't happen, of course—it would be pretty upsetting if a build were to eat any of my files when I run it—but since we won't have tested the app before giving you access I can't make any guarantees.)

In other words, sneaky peeks aren't for the faint of heart; they're an invitation to come join us on the bleeding edge of our development process.

If this sounds interesting to you, then you're invited to visit our [URL="http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus/download/sneakypeek/"]"sneaky peek" web site[/URL], where you'll find our latest internal builds. If you'd rather wait until we have something a little less risky, just stay tuned and we'll let you know when the next version of OmniFocus reaches a more stable state.

Changes in OmniFocus 1.6 sneaky peeks (as of Feb 4, 2009):
[LIST][*]New features[LIST][*]Actions and Projects have the option to complete when all of their children have completed. This is settable on a per item basis in the inspector, and as a synchronized global setting in preferences. (If you're using this feature and synchronizing with an iPhone, be sure to use OmniFocus for iPhone v1.2 or later.)[*]Actions without contexts are no longer considered unavailable.[*]The "Inbox" and "No Context" groups can now be filtered using the action filters.[/LIST][*]Main window[LIST][*]Marking a project as reviewed now advances the selection to the next project which needs review.[*]Marking a project as reviewed now saves any text field edits which might be in progress.[*]Pressing Escape when using SmartMatch will revert to your previous selection rather than taking the current value.[*]Double-clicking an expansion triangle should expand/collapse, not beep.[*]Improved handling of resizing the sidebar.[*]Changed an annoying error panel to just a bonk sound when moving items where they're not allowed.[*]Show an indicator when archiving.[*]Don't have the SmartMatch completions suddenly close in certain cases.[*]Do a better job of making sure that your window is visible when restarting OmniFocus after removing a display from your setup.[*]Creating a new sub context with command-return should now work correctly.[/LIST][*]Perspectives[LIST][*]The settings for perspectives are now visible by default.[*]Fixed an issue with Perspective icons.[*]Don't hide the Perspectives window when making a new perspective from the menu.[*]The built-in perspective toolbar icons now draw as selected, and any new windows have the item selected as well.[*]Don't hide the toolbar when deleting the currently active perspective.[*]All built-in perspectives will now open a new window if necessary when opening from the menu (rather than doing nothing).[/LIST][*]Preferences[LIST][*]Prevent syncing preferences from trying to show 2 sync types at once.[*]Preferences layout cleaned up.[*]Some cleanup of the Styles Preferences.[*]Labels made more consistent throughout.[*]Warn that applying a theme will overwrite your current theme, and you should stop and save the current theme if you want to save it.[*]When choosing a near-white font in the styles preferences, have the color in the outline show as black so that it's readable.[*]All automatic backups now get properly placed in the specified location.[*]When clicking between the different sync options we don't throw away what you've typed since its often accidental when initially setting up sync.[*]When entering an address for a WebDAV server we try to fix bad URLs (warning when we do).[*]The preferences help buttons now scroll to the top of their respective help pages.[/LIST][*]AppleScript[LIST][*]Added AppleScript to distinguish between syncing with iCal and syncing with your webdav/MobileMe server.[*]Update AppleScript to only close the current window when calling "close".[*]The AppleScript "archive" command now supports a "using cache" parameter which specifies whether new XML is generated from the cache database (rather than the standard behavior of simply copying the XML specified in existing transactions).[/LIST][*]Date entry[LIST][*]Fixed an issue with date entry so that we don't accidently get the first of the month instead of today when entering just a time.[*]Fixed a date entry bug where we were adding a week when a weekday and +1w were used.[*]Correctly have "noon" refer to 12pm, not 12 hours from now.[/LIST][*]Menus[LIST][*]You can attach folders as well as files through the "Attach File" menu item. (You could always drag in folders, but the open panel from Attach File wouldn't let you select one.)[*]The status menu should only have active items when the items selected have statuses.[*]The dock menu now shows contexts as nested menus instead of a giant huge long list.[*]Added a new menu item, "Expand All Notes" with the hotkey of: "cmd-opt-'".[*]Added a dock menu item to synchronize your database.[*]Add sort options to the right click menu.[*]Hide unavailable menu items when they can't be used.[/LIST][*]Miscellaneous[LIST][*]When there are more than 4 due actions available just show one Growl notification.[*]You should now be able to cancel an import from OmniOutliner from the import dialog.[*]Assigning a project to inbox item updates the item's modified date.[*]Update the MobileMe authentication panel to have the OmniFocus icon on it, so that you know why you're being asked for your information.[*]Non-English users should be able to type English words and abbreviations into the duration field as well as their native words and abbreviations.[*]Preserve newlines in notes when exporting to HTML.[*]The Quick Entry window now has a title that is never seen by the user, but should allow 3rd party virtual desktop managers to handle it. It's called "OmniFocus QuickEntry".[*]When printing use the correct parallel/sequential icon.[*]You can now choose which port the local Bonjour server should run on by setting the SyncServerPort default.[*]The Context inspector now accurately displays the state of the selected contexts when changed via controls other than the inspector.[/LIST][*]Stability[LIST][*]No longer crash when running a non-existent script from the toolbar.[*]Don't crash when creating and destroying a project in a focused window.[*]Fixed some crashes related to Spaces.[*]Fixed numerous issues with the Toolbar that were causing crashes with printing, perspectives, and some other places as well. This seemed to be due to a change in a recent update of the OS.[*]Don't crash when entering a date that doesn't validate into the archive panel.[*]Fixed a crash when deleting a project or folder that is part of the focus set in a window.[*]Fixed a rare undo/redo crasher.[*]Fixed a crash when creating an action while viewing completed projects & actions.[*]Change the background color of the search filter to your selection color when there is a search active to remind that some of your data is likely not showing.[/LIST][/LIST]

I'm too new at this to know if there are dangers involved, so I'm going for it! OmniFocus notified me of the update when I opened it moments ago.
Exciting to have an update ! Thanks, Ken and Omnigroup!

Oh frabjous day!

Booya! Thank you Omni.

[QUOTE=chasmas;54734]I'm too new at this to know if there are dangers involved, so I'm going for it! OmniFocus notified me of the update when I opened it moments ago.[/QUOTE]

Woops, sorry about that! We didn't mean to advertise the new sneaky peeks to OmniFocus 1.5 quite yet. Thanks for letting us know; it's fixed now.

(In other words: if you want to stay with a stable version, you can go back to 1.5 and it won't bug you again about v1.6 until it actually reaches GM.)

I could not copy the 1.6 to my Applications folder. It tells me that "OmniMailMessageService" is enabled (or something like that, don't remember exactly the error message)

[QUOTE=xamevou;54745]I could not copy the 1.6 to my Applications folder. It tells me that "OmniMailMessageService" is enabled (or something like that, don't remember exactly the error message)[/QUOTE]

Quit Mail (so it stops trying to use OmniFocus' "Clip-O-Tron 3000"), then try again. Does that help? (You can relaunch Mail again afterwards.)

[QUOTE=Ken Case;54746]Quit Mail (so it stops trying to use OmniFocus' "Clip-O-Tron 3000"), then try again. Does that help? (You can relaunch Mail again afterwards.)[/QUOTE]
Thanks. Yes, it helps, after a few seconds of quitting Mail, though. I did two attemps. The first one failed with a "OmniMetaDataImporter in use" error. 5 seconds later it worked.

Displaying time in days!
 

Guys, I don't see the option for displaying time in days in the new update. Please consider some of us do tasks that (unfortunately) are based in days, not hours.

It is quite annoying to figure out how many days do 408, 168 and 312 hours mean.

Thanks.

[QUOTE=jchaac;54785]Guys, I don't see the option for displaying time in days in the new update. Please consider some of us do tasks that (unfortunately) are based in days, not hours.

It is quite annoying to figure out how many days do 408, 168 and 312 hours mean.

Thanks.[/QUOTE]

What do you mean? Is this the time estimate field or something?

Yes, if you set the estimated duration for an action to 2d (for 2 days) it will show up as 48 hours, for example.

One nice feature that I am seeing in 1.6 is that the icons for the default views (Projects, Contexts, Due, etc.) now have the same visual feedback in the toolbar as saved perspective icons do when activated. Nice!

First Day of Week bug - not fixed?
 

Hi folks, I haven't yet downloaded/installed the sneakypeek, so I maybe it has been fixed, but I see no reference in the above list of fixes to the known issue (as confirmed to me by the ninjas last month) wherein the OF 'First Day of the Week' preference of users with particular Mac OS X system date formats are ignored, and 'stuck' on Sunday, even if the user had selected a preference for Monday.

Any developments on this one?

Al

As of the latest SP this AM, it is still stuck on Sunday.

Thank you.

Al

The auto complete projects is HUGE!

Thanks,
BZ

The 'Due or Flagged' filter in the latest SP is great-thanks! To make this view even more useful, I'd like to see the flagged count added to contexts in the sidebar, perhaps with the number in a gray background which would be consistent with how colors are used on the iPhone version. In other words, display overdue actions with white on red oval, due soon actions with white on orange oval, and flagged actions with white on gray oval.

One other observation, the 'Show Due Soon and Overdue actions' behavior in the dock and in the menu bar seems to have changed, and is not consistent with what is displayed in the sidebar or on the iPhone. If I have 1 overdue item and 4 due soon items, the menu bar and dock badge show a red 1. If I complete the overdue item, the badge changes to an orange 4. This hasn't always behaved this way, has it?

Is anyone else finding that the software update on OmniFocus is broken? I've been manually installing the sneaky peeks, but am getting no joy from the software update. I just keep getting "Error fetching software update information." I did send in a report a little while back, but only got an auto-acknowledgement.

It's working fine for me, unlike the problems I had when 1.5 was a SP.

Due or flagged!
 

Thanks, Omni folks!

[QUOTE=Greg Jones;55143]One other observation, the 'Show Due Soon and Overdue actions' behavior in the dock and in the menu bar seems to have changed, and is not consistent with what is displayed in the sidebar or on the iPhone. If I have 1 overdue item and 4 due soon items, the menu bar and dock badge show a red 1. If I complete the overdue item, the badge changes to an orange 4. This hasn't always behaved this way, has it?[/QUOTE]

That's how I always remember it behaving. How would you prefer it behave?

I thought it once mirrored the behavior of the badge on the iPhone. One overdue and four due soon items would have an iPhone badge count of 5. As far as how I would prefer it behave, I don't know that I have a preference. Clearly if it has always worked this way on the desktop, I haven't noticed it before now. Having said that, it would seem logical that the badge count on the iPhone and the desktop should be consistent.

[QUOTE=Greg Jones;55154]I thought it once mirrored the behavior of the badge on the iPhone. One overdue and four due soon items would have an iPhone badge count of 5. As far as how I would prefer it behave, I don't know that I have a preference. Clearly if it has always worked this way on the desktop, I haven't noticed it before now. Having said that, it would seem logical that the badge count on the iPhone and the desktop should be consistent.[/QUOTE]

It has never mirrored the badge on the iPhone. The desktop version shows only OVERDUE items if there are some, and if there are none, it shows an orange # with DUE SOON items.

The iPhone one shows the combination of the two (overdue PLUS due soon).

I'd rather have more flexibility here. I'd also like the ability to set the number of days in "due soon" different between iPhone and Desktop versions.

[QUOTE=CatOne;55155]
I'd rather have more flexibility here. I'd also like the ability to set the number of days in "due soon" different between iPhone and Desktop versions.[/QUOTE]

I believe you can set the "Due Soon" in the iPhone separately in the Settings panel.

[QUOTE=LawDaddy;55173]I believe you can set the "Due Soon" in the iPhone separately in the Settings panel.[/QUOTE]

Yes, you can. But it changes the settings on the desktop version, on the next sync. And vice versa.

HI Greg, I noticed you mentioned a 'due or flagged' filter -- I've downloaded the most recent sneeky peak but can't find this anywhere in the view bar or default perspectives icon set. Where do I find this? Thanks,

"Due or Flagged" can be found in Context View in the "Show Actions with Status" selector (see attached).

It's also available under the View menu, but again, only in Context view.

[QUOTE=Greg Jones;54826]As of the latest SP this AM, it is still stuck on Sunday.[/QUOTE]

I've been unable to reproduce this consistently, but we're aware this is an issue. If you can reproduce this please email us your settings and anything else you can think of that might be useful.

Also, where this is causing problems for you..
-the dropdown calendar?
-when typing dates?
-in the main window?
-in the inspector?

I've been trying to nail this down, but the things I try always seem to work for me.

All calendars look as I would expect them to. It when typing a date shortcut that I see an inconsistency. Here is what I am seeing:

1) Set the preference of 'First Day of Week' to Monday
2) Create a new task
3) Type in the start date column field 'next week'

The result is 2/22/09, which is next Sunday. However, next Sunday is the last day of this week as the first day of the week is set to be Monday. I would expect the result to be Monday, 2/23/09 (the first day of next week).

Likewise, if I:

1) Set the preference of 'First Day of Week' to Monday
2) Create a new task
3) Type in the due date column field 'next week'

The result is 2/28/09, which is a Saturday, but I would expect that it should set the date to Sunday, March 1 (the last day of next week).

Let me know if you need more info.

Hurray, there are many specific things for me to celebrate! Thanks.

Bob

[QUOTE=xamevou;54747]Thanks. Yes, it helps, after a few seconds of quitting Mail, though. I did two attemps. The first one failed with a "OmniMetaDataImporter in use" error. 5 seconds later it worked.[/QUOTE]
My own solution to this problem is to thrown the current app in the trash BEFORE copying the new app into it's place. I may be wrong, but I believe that the launch of the "new" app will trigger all of the sub-processes to get restarted by their updated counterparts. In any case, I haven't had any issues doing it that way.