[Ken Case]

First, what are sneaky peeks?

Sneaky peeks are our latest (unstable) internal builds. These internal builds are exactly what we see here at Omni: they're just snapshots of our development that are updated every few hours and haven't gone through any sort of vetting process—which means that you might actually be the first person to try a particular build and discover that it eats your system. (We hope that doesn't happen, of course—it would be pretty upsetting if a build were to eat any of our files when we run it—but since we won't have tested the app before giving you access we can't make any guarantees.)

In other words, sneaky peeks aren't for the faint of heart; they're an invitation to come join us on the bleeding edge of our development process.

Now that that's out of the way, what's new in OmniFocus 1.8?

OmniFocus 1.8 for Mac improves task workflow by including projects, groups, and inbox items in Context lists, Due lists, and Flagged lists. This prevents these items from slipping through the cracks, and makes it easier to check them off when they're complete.

Workflow Improvements

Groups, Projects, and Inbox items now show up in Context lists, Due lists, and Flagged lists. When actions are sorted by project, parent items follow their children (which is the natural order for completing them). Single Action Lists are not actionable, and do not appear in Context lists.

Groups are now considered actionable. They can block other actions in a sequence, and are eligible to become the first "next action" for a project. Groups are blocked by their children.

We've reorganized the filtering options in the View Bar, separating the Availability Filter from the Status Filter and adding some new options. For example, you can now choose to show all Remaining items which are either Due or Flagged—or only those Due or Flagged items which are currently Available.

Context mode can now display all actions at once: you no longer have to choose between showing Remaining or Completed actions. (This is great for viewing a list of all items by date modified, for example.)

Synchronization

• Sync Preferences now has an option to publish an OmniFocus Reminders calendar for due task notifications.
  
• Sync settings sent through email are now compatible with iPhone OS 3.0 and later. (In iPhone OS 3.0, iPhone Mail stopped recognizing dashes in URL schemes, so we've switched to using omnifocus:///setup-sync?url=...)
  
• Edits in progress should no longer get lost when changes are synchronized from another computer.
  
• Fixed a bug where syncing a change to an action's start date wouldn't always change its context's count of available actions.
  
• Fixed a bug which could cause duplication of a repeating due project or group during synchronization.
  
• Improved sync compatibility with some Windows WebDAV servers.
  

Attachment List

• The Attachment List now sorts its attachments when it first appears (rather than only sorting when you click on a column header).
  
• The Attachment List now obeys your date format settings from System Preferences.
  
• When the Attachment List is visible, it no longer shows up twice in the Window menu.
  
• Fixed a crash seen when double-clicking on a perspective icon attachment in the Attachment List.
  
• Fixed a crash encountered on 10.4 when clicking on the column headers in the Attachment List.
  
• Fixed a crash encountered when deleting large numbers of attachments at once.
  
• The Attachment List will no longer refuse to delete attachments which it can't find in the container's notes.
  
• The Attachment List is much faster at handling long lists of attachments.
  

Miscellaneous

• Added support for omnifocus:///add URLs for adding items via Quick Entry (as introduced in OmniFocus 1.6 for iPhone).
  
• Added support for changing synchronized settings through settings links like this:
  

  omnifocus:///change-setting?DefaultDueTime=22:00

• Updated the built-in help.
  
• Updated the iDisk icon in Sync Preferences.
  
• Updated the flag in a number of icons.
  
• Fixed a bug where Due Soon items wouldn't always update on schedule.
  
• When a project is on hold or otherwise inactive, its actions are no longer considered to be available.
  
• Project mode can now display the Project column. (The current project is implied by the project hierarchy, but a separate column can be useful when reviewing a project and reassigning actions to different projects.)
  
• Duplicating a project from the sidebar no longer skips completed items in that project. (This matches the behavior of duplicating a project in the main outline.)
  
• The "No Context" sidebar item no longer counts items which are assigned to dropped contexts.
  
• Fixed some regressions with the application unhiding while using Quick Entry.
  
• Fixed a bug where OmniFocus could incorrectly indicate you were in a perspective when opening a related window (e.g. double-clicking on an action in the Due perspective would claim that the new window was also in the Due perspective).
  
• Checking for updates will no longer trigger an "invalid display" message to the Console.
  
• Spotlight searches support searching for completed actions.
  
• The gear button in the column header area is no longer stretched and blurry, and its border line now lines up with the scroller line below it.
  
• Fixed a crash sometimes encountered when double-clicking on Library in a focused window.
  

You can download the latest build-of-the-day from the OmniFocus sneaky peek download page.

We look forward to your feedback!