Hi there,
I'm currently evaluating OmniFocus and Things and am currently only using OmniFocus so I guess the decision is already made ;-)
So, I really like OmniFocus a lot - there's only one thing I find extremely annoying about it: The user-interface. It seems to me that it doesn't really follow the usual user interface best practices on the Mac (or in some cases, computer-software in general). And that's one of the things I love about Mac: Most applications follow a simple logic which makes it much easier to switch between applications. Usually, only applications ported from Windows break this simplicity and OmniFocus is one of the few applications I have that "just don't really feel like Mac" (to me, YMMV ;-) ).
For instance: In the Finder, when I have selected any item, I can simply hit enter to get into "Rename" mode (which is usually done via F2 on Windows). However, OmniFocus will create a new action whenever I hit enter, no matter what I currently have selected. I either need to go through the inspector or context-menu.
When I'm in edit mode, instead of using enter to "enter" those changes, I have to use esc to save the changes and exit. What??? Esc is there for canceling any operation I'm currently involved in - not for saving. Maybe Apple Address Book does the same crazy thing - but that's certainly not something one should take as an example. I'll admit, though, that since Apple has already broken the usual convention for this, this one is not exactly "on-topic" … that one's already discussed in
this thread anyways.
Another one that I find really annoying: Usually, when you double-click any item, you either open it or get the properties of that item (if that's what's getting closest to "opening" the item as the properties basically represent the item). In OmniFocus, when I double click a project another window opens with the double clicked item focussed, which I don't really feel makes any sense in most cases (I'd rather click "Focus" because if a second window opens, I'd have to close the first one which is much more work than just clicking that button - if double-clicking would just focus that item without opening another window, it would make some sense to me; but opening windows is just something I really don't want to do at all most of the time). If I want to open the properties, I have to select it, and then click "inspect" (or keep the inspector open all the time which I don't really want to do).
Also: Properties (inspector) should be available in the context menu when right-clicking on any item.
And: Very important - right-clicking should use whatever I clicked on as context, instead of using what I currently have selected (which is how the current implementation seems to handle it). To create a new folder / project / single-item list when another one is already selected (which is usually the case), I first have to click into the empty area (to "unselect") and then right-click for the correct context-menu (very cumbersome).
Drag and drop is another area that behaves in very weird ways: I'm starting to get used to the "I have to click that little dot / icon to do drag'n'drop" - but I don't really like this as it's not the usual way of doing things (in the beginning, I thought "oh, OmniFocus doesn't even support drag and drop" - until I started "playing around" with this "weird dot in the actions"). I see the benefit that I can multiselect without using a key - but so far, I had not a single use for multi-selecting projects but had hundreds of "drag'n'drop operations". So, I really would mind doing multiselections with the usual keys (Ctrl + click for selecting individual items, Shift + Click to select the range from the currently selected item to the one I'm clicking on with Shift).
I can see that changing all this is not only a lot of work for you guys but may also confuse users who are used to the current "style of UI" (and there's also the issue with other OmniApps following the same guidelines as mentioned in that other posting) … but to me, the current way that OmniFocus expects me to behave feels awkward and non-standard, and I'm pretty sure that will be the case for most new users.
One possible solution might be to have an option "Omni-style behavior" and "Mac-style behavior". I don't really like having options for everything because IMHO it just bloats the code but it may be the least painful solution for the users now that many are used to what I would call "the oddest UI behavior I can find on my Mac".
I hope this doesn't come across to negative or critical - I really do like OmniFocus and think it's a great piece of software; it's just that it forces me to learn a lot of stuff that's already hard-coded in my reptile brain which I think is where these things really do belong (which is why I like UI standardization across applications in an OS).
Sunny regards,
Jashan