[Schlaefer]

Originally Posted by 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.

The only app there I have such dynamic sidebar like in OmniFocus is my notekeeping app (Mori) and to be fair: the nested tree view sucks there too.

The main reason why OmniFocus stands out is that I try to navigate fast not only in the content view but in the sidebar with the keyboard. In other sidebar apps like Mail, iTunes etc. you make a selection in the sidebar and then work in the main view for some time.

When I look at the problem from a little higher level and I know this is totaly geek, but I would literaly pay for a quick navigate panel for projects. If you know TextMate for example: it has handy quick navigate panels for files (cmd+t) or symbols (cmd+shift+t). The whole sidebar/focus/navigation problem would be gone for me.

Originally Posted by Toadling

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?

Maybe it's my cheap monitor but this is to subtile for my taste. A real inverted badge (white text on dark ground) would imho be much better (and more consistent to the rest of the system).

Originally Posted by Toadling

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.).

Oh, thank you. I bought OmniFocus in the beta but didn't start actually using it as my main tool til four weeks ago. I wasn't aware and definitely will try it.

Originally Posted by Toadling

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.

Yeah, wouldn't be surprised if it looks awkward. Needs more time in @think_about. ;)

Originally Posted by Toadling

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.

A little bit related to that: the fear to change something without noticing it makes me always feel a little bit uncomfortable to see the cursor blink when I click on an item without intention to change that particular field.
But for the sake of speed is probably to the best solution. Just out of curiosity I would like to test a OF version where I have to double click an field to go in editing mode.