View Single Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by mfreund View Post
It's troublesome that if I want to re-order the tasks within a project, I have to manually drag them into place -- especially since dragging is do difficult in OF. I appreciate the value of having tasks in a static order (rather than dynamically sorting all the time), but it would be great to be able to do a one-time sort as well.

...

In any case, if the sort function doesn't work in Planning mode, why leave the pulldown visible? Better to grey it out or disappear it altogether. Otherwise, it's just confusing.
Sorting does work in Planning mode, but it works on projects, not actions. The pulldown menu says, "Sort Projects By:" in Planning mode.

The assumption is that the order of actions in a project is important, so it's never changed in Planning mode. The order of actions within a project often represent dependencies in sequential projects or priorities in a parallel project.

Note that you can still manually reorder actions in projects by either dragging them yourself or right-clicking and choosing an option from the Sort submenu (also available under Edit->Sort in the menu bar).

Quote:
Originally Posted by mfreund View Post
(...And that's another pet peeve I have -- you have to grab the task in just the right place, to the left of the checkbox but not drag while you're selecting or you'll select multiple items! And why can't you drag multiple items, anyway? But I digress...)
I think OmniFocus' drag and edit behaviors come from its OmniOutliner heritage. Drag objects by the row's handle (bullet or checkbox), where the mouse cursor appears as an arrow. Edit items by simply placing the cursor with a single click in the text, where the mouse cursor appears as an I-beam.

To me, this makes perfect sense for entering and editing text quickly. It feels just like a text editor or a word processor, except that you can also easily drag, reorder, and indent lines (i.e. rows). And, like a text editor, you can also move the text editing cursor to other rows with only the arrow keys and create new lines by hitting the Return key.

I had been taking this advantage for granted until I tried a competing app that required a double-click to edit text and Command-N to create a new row. I couldn't believe how clunky and slow that felt by comparison.

As for selecting multiple items, that can be done with Shift-click for contiguous selections or Command-click for non-contiguous items (again, clicking on the row handle), or, as you know, dragging across multiple rows to the left of the row handle. Once you have a selection, just click and drag from a row handle. It works with single or multiple rows.

Note that you can also move selections with just the keyboard: Control-Command-Up/Down Arrow.

Last edited by Toadling; 2008-03-06 at 10:19 AM..