[brianogilvie]

Originally Posted by MacBerry

I'm getting a bit frustrated with the OF interface. Please note that these comments relate to use on a 15" MacBook Pro; I'm sure the experience is much different on a large screen.

I find that the Inspector sits nicely at the rlght side of the OmniFocus window on my 15" MBP. (I also find it odd to think of a 15" widescreen display as small, but then my first Mac had a 9" screen with a 512x384 pixel resolution....) My comments below represent my point of view but I can see how reasonable people might differ on them.

I've just worked out how to get perspectives onto the toolbar. It'd be nice if I could just drag them there from the perspectives pallet, which is what I was trying to do. Why are they drag-able if I can't put them anywhere?

I think they're draggable so you can change the order in the Perspectives window.

3) I can set icons for perspectives, but not for contexts? This is kind of worse still because most of the default icons available for perspectives would relate better to contexts, such as a laptop, a car, a home, a shopping bag etc.

But for Contexts, you have the actual name of the context there. If you want to maximize the number of perspectives you can put in the toolbar, you can have the toolbar show icons only. Then it's very helpful to have distinctive icons for each perspective. I see customizable Perspectives icons as useful, for that reason, whereas custom context icons would be an excuse to fiddle instead of making your system more productive.

4) I'd like the side bar to be customisable. Most "urgent" would be the ability to sort it, for example to get my projects in alphabetical order in planning mode, but it'd also be good if I could drag things like perspectives to it. i.e. more like a proper source bar.

You can sort the project sidebar in 1.1. Select the items you would like to sort and use the Edit > Sort menu command. You can sort the sidebar by name, status, date added, or date completed.

I don't like the idea of putting things like perspectives in the sidebar, mostly because I think it's bad UI to put something in the sidebar that might alter the sidebar itself instead of the data showing in the main pane of the window. For instance, if I had a Flagged Actions context in the sidebar and I clicked on it in Planning mode, it would switch to Context mode. I can't think of any application I use where making a selection in the sidebar gets rid of the sidebar.

5) Related to 2, if I click on a perspective in the toolbar, the button indents so I can see where I am, and the perspective name appears in the title bar - good so far. But if I then change the view, or even EVERYTHING, it still claims I'm in that perspective, which I'm not of course. I can even click the same (still indented) button and go back to the perspective, so it obviously knows I'm not already there. I'd almost class this as a bug rather than a feature request.

But you can click on the X at the far right of the View Bar to restore the perspective settings. The exception is if you have changed modes, unless your perspective is set up to remember settings in both context and planning mode.

As I said, reasonable people can differ on these points!