[MacBerry]

Originally Posted by brianogilvie

I find that the Inspector sits nicely at the rlght side of the OmniFocus window on my 15" MBP.

Yes that's how I have mine set up now, and it is the best compromise available, but it still feels like a huge waste of space - there's a huge inspector wide area below the inspector that's not used, and it's even worse when nothing is selected because the inspector uses width while displaying nothing of any use at all.

I think my main issue is that the inspector uses a lot of space yet still doesn't show me everything. If I want to see/change a note for example, I still have to click on the note icon and then edit inline - it's inconsistent, as I have to use the inspector to change some things, yet inline for others. I'd like to see everything appear either inline (ideally) or in an automatically expanding bottom bar.

Originally Posted by brianogilvie

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.

I don't see why it's an excuse to fiddle - you could say that about any UI element you can configure. I'm guessing most people only set up their contexts once or infrequently.

Icons help a great deal, as they make an item in a list instantly recognisable rather than having to read something. That is pretty much the definition of what an icon is for after-all!

Originally Posted by brianogilvie

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.

Thanks for that, that works. But there're two big buts:

1) It doesn't remember what you've told it, even if you save as a perspective, so anything new added still goes at the top. It's a huge waste of time having to re-sort every time you add a new project.

2) IMHO this is very bad UI design. Why have "sort" in two menu's? I want to view the sidebar differently, so I look in the view menu. I don't want to edit it, so why would I look in the edit menu, especially when there is a sort command in the view menu?

Originally Posted by brianogilvie

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.

Yes, I see your point.

Originally Posted by brianogilvie

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.

Well, I'm just as likely to change mode as anything else, but even if not one of the things I like about perspectives is that I can hide the view bar once they're set up, so I don't see the cross then. But anyway, I just think it's bad to have a visual indication that I'm looking at one thing, when plainly I'm not any longer.

The only argument I can see for this behaviour is that I then know which perspective I'll be snap-shotting if I choose to do that, but I think there must be cuter ways to deal with that.

Originally Posted by brianogilvie

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

Oh indeed!

Mark