[Toadling]

Schlaefer, thanks for the nice screen mock-ups! I agree that it can sometimes be hard to tell if the sidebar or main content area has focus. It's an issue that exists in many OS X apps but is particularly noticeable in OmniFocus because of its outlining capabilities with lots of collapsible nodes in both the sidebar and the content area.

I wonder if the "Collapse All" and "Expand All" options weren't available, would this issue have even come up? The only other app I can think of with similar capabilities is Apple Mail with its "Expand All Threads" and "Collapse All Threads" options. But those clearly only apply to items in the app's content area, so it doesn't matter where focus is. Consequently, it avoids the issue altogether.

Originally Posted by Schlaefer

So a good start would be to use the invers highlight in the sidebar when selected and active

Yes, I agree. And that seem to be what most apps are relying on these days.

But doesn't OmniFocus already do this? When I have something selected in both the sidebar and the main content area, and then toggle focus back and forth between the two areas using Command-4, I can see the active region has blue highlighting while the inactive region's highlighting turns gray. Isn't this what you're talking about?

Maybe the highlight color set via System Preferences -> Appearance also makes a difference. If you use the silver or graphite options, visibility may be reduced. I have mine set to the default blue.

So it seems like the only thing that might be done here is to increase the contrast of the current selection to increase its prominence. What do you think?

Originally Posted by Schlaefer

The remaining problem is: what to do when nothing is selected (leaving out "selected but not visible") ...

At the moment I'm not aware of an application solving that issue in any way. But these applications unlike OF show nothing in the main view when nothing is selected in the sidebar, have a special root item for "everything" in the sidebar or don't allow to select nothing in the sidebar. That brings us to the question: do we need a sidebar with no item selected at all?

This is actually something that was discussed on this forum last December (see posts near the end of this thread). OmniFocus has a hidden preference to leave the main content area empty when there's no sidebar selection:

defaults write com.omnigroup.OmniFocus LeaveEmptySelectionEmpty -bool YES

I vastly prefer this behavior over the OmniFocus' default behavior of showing everything when there's no sidebar selection. Not only does it help you determine if the sidebar or main content area has focus, but it's also lightning fast when switching between planning and context modes with no selection (presumably because nothing needs to be rendered in the main content area). I think this behavior is also more consistent with other OS X apps (e.g. Apple Mail, Yojimbo, etc.).

Originally Posted by Schlaefer

A visual clue I could think of would be a blueish halo around the active area when nothing is selected

That possibility did occur to me, but can't think of any other app that does that. And I wonder if it would be too garish. But it's certainly something to consider.

Originally Posted by Schlaefer

I create a project and enter a name for it. After that most of the time I don't rename the project anymore but open and close it when reviewing and planing. But the triangle is really small and the rename function (clicking on the title) is huuuge. The function most in use gets the least screen estate and vice versa.

That's a really good point. But, at least in my case, it only holds true for the sidebar, where I do more toggling than renaming. But in the main content area, I think I'm more likely to do renaming.

Either way, you and Matt Neuburg are probably right in that it'd be nice if the disclosure triangle had a slightly larger target area.

Originally Posted by Schlaefer

Hey, 10 sec a day for unnecessary complicated item toggling is 1 hour in your life this year you will never get back. Not to mention the endless hours on the internet spend talking about it. ;)

Ha ha, you are so right about that!