Quote:
Originally Posted by Tim Wood
In the case you mention, the project is currently more important to you, but there is nothing to say that the action might not be more important in another scenario -- OmniFocus can't make this decision for you.
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I think it can and it should - make me use context view for this.
I think one of the challenges OF will face in being a commercial success is that it is so damn flexible.
While this is great for this hard core early adopter crowd, the best tools are those that are easy to use for those who don't need every feature, but can accommodate the power users as well.
I think this is a case where OF needs to be more assertive.
labeling the view bars with headers like "Sort Projects by", while it still requires a click to understand what will happen, was a great move and a big improvement.
It made more clear that, in general, planning mode is more project oriented, while context view is more action oriented. While people will continue to ask for action sorting as a secondary sort in planning mode, this can be an FAQ. However if when in planning mode you have to grok that sometimes sorting projects is really subject to override by an action, it can cause a bit of feature vertigo - you question what you thought you know.
If it is important not to miss an action that has a due date - use the context view. Sometimes its better to force fewer options on the users, because then there is less to remember. Sometimes OF feels like English must feel to a non-english speaker. Yes you can learn it all eventually, but there aren't just a set of simple clear rules. You have to learn the basic rules, which are clear enough - and then all the quirks and exceptions that go on top of, or modify that.
So many of these exceptions can be argued to have a logical reason (unlike the english language), but often to me, these explained scenarios exist out on the tail ends of a bell curve of most likely uses, while being confusing to the majority of users.
Veterans of the development process like brianogilvie are perfectly happy because they've lived with the peculiarities for so long, but you also have to consider the customer who will be downloading the demo on Jan 10th.
Again, I want to say I'm thrilled with the product and most of the design decisions. There are some super tough calls to make on the whole ease-of-use vs powertool trade off. And you've hit a lot of sweet spots!
So good luck, please don't take any of my criticisms personally - January 8th is coming mighty fast - we'll be up in Seattle visiting my folks next week - maybe I'll bring by some snacks for the midnight oil that will likely be burning.
-P