[Ken Case]

OmniFocus 1.7.5 is now available!

The 1.7.x releases of OmniFocus aim to make the app easier to understand, both conceptually and visually. We've also made many enhancements to Perspectives, which are now synchronized between Macs, and updated the app to work with Snow Leopard.

First, some important notes about the 1.7 release:

• The window toolbar in 1.7 has been reset (for the first time in two years) because it needs to be reconfigured to refer to the new syncing perspectives used by 1.7, rather than referring to the earlier perspectives which were stored on disk. If you spent time customizing your 1.6 toolbar, we're very sorry for the inconvenience! (Hopefully the new features make the tradeoff worth it.)
• The default styles have changed in 1.7's default theme to be based on the Lucida Grande font. If you've customized some of the fonts in the past, your customizations may not match the new default settings, so you might want to open Style Preferences and click the Reset button to see the 1.7 theme in its unaltered state. If you prefer the OmniFocus 1.6 default theme (based on Helvetica), you can download and open OmniFocus-1.6-Defaults-Theme.zip.
• OmniFocus 1.7 for Mac is fully sync-compatible with OmniFocus 1.5 for iPhone, but not with OmniFocus 1.6 for Mac. (OmniFocus 1.6 won't understand some of the new features in the sync database, like the new synced perspectives, and may crash when it encounters them. No data will be lost or corrupted, it just won't work if you're using any of those new features.)

Here are the release notes for OmniFocus 1.7:

Perspectives

• We've done an extensive overhaul on Perspectives.
• Perspectives have received a new configuration window, that lets you control their behavior, and exposes what they can do for you. Hopefully this is much more clear and obvious. To help, we've made all of the default perspectives (Inbox, Projects, Contexts, Due, Flagged and Review) editable (don't worry, you can revert them to their default settings!) so you can adjust these defaults how you want them, assign new images and keyboard shortcuts to them. And, of course, you can still configure your own custom perspectives.
• Perspectives are also now synced between your desktop copies of OmniFocus (we're looking into supporting them on the iPhone).
• Perspectives are no longer stored as files on the disk, but you can open a perspective from a URL using a syntax like: omnifocus:///perspective/Inbox
• The Perspectives window will open in the top right corner of the screen by default, rather than in the center. (It still remembers where you left it, of course.)
• Opening an OmniFocus 1.6 perspective file in the Finder will import it into the current database and open a window displaying that perspective.

Attachments

• Storing large files in your OmniFocus database can cause slow syncing, and sometimes files that you didn't mean to attach can get into your database. We've added an Attachment List to the Window menu, for finding and deleting attachments.
• An attachment's name is now displayed underneath its icon.
• Pasting an image from another application will now prefer to use PDF, PNG, or TIFF from the pasteboard over other image types (such as JPEG or PICT).
• Fixed a bug which could cause undo/redo of adding/removing embedded attachments to lose track of their data.

Repeat Inspector

• We've redesigned the repeat inspector to be more specific about whether a task becomes due [n] days after completion, or just starts to become available again.

General Friendliness

• We've tried to simplify the first launch experience for new users.
• Users who are using an unlicensed version should just see a reminder in the window, and not have lots of windows pop up while running during the trial period.
• We've made some visual improvements, updating the default theme in Style Preferences to use Lucida Grande, include more whitespace between rows, and so on. If you would like to try the new theme, open Style Preferences and click on the Reset button to reset all the settings to the new default. (You might want to first use the gear menu above that Reset button to save your existing theme, in case you ever want to easily restore to your old settings.)
• We've made the update process smoother, with a number of software update fixes.
• Since the software update window already shows you release notes for the version you're downloading, we've stopped automatically popping up a separate Message of the Day window when you first launch a new version. (You can also continue to access these Release Notes through the Help menu.)

Interface Improvements

• Command-N will now open the Quick Entry window rather than opening a new OmniFocus document window. To open a new OmniFocus window, use Option-Command-N (like Mail), or double-click a project or folder or task to open a window focused on that item.
• OmniFocus 1.7 has a new look for the View Bar (to control your filters, collation and sorting) and for column headers.
• The View Bar's highlighting has also undergone some changes. When you change a setting (Filter, Sorting, Collation) to be different from the default state, it will turn blue. Before this wasn't consistent as we would color the text based on your active perspective. That was too confusing, so now we always color when you're different from the default state.
• The View Bar now has labels that are always visible to make it more obvious which settings are which.
• With a setting in General Preferences, new windows can now be opened with the last-used view settings, or with a specific perspective.
• By default OmniFocus will display "Yesterday" "Today" and "Tomorrow" instead of their respective dates.
• Added support for pasting plain text into the sidebar.

Syncing

• Improved syncing performance by reducing the amount of sync history (zip files) required to keep multiple systems synchronized.
• OmniFocus automatically detects when you have lots of completed actions and asks whether you want to archive them, which will speed up your syncing and loading times.
• When your database is out of sync, you will be presented with a much simpler window which asks you whether you want to replace your local database with the sync database or not (rather than asking you to choose between Server or Local). If you actually want to replace the sync database with the current database from your local copy of OmniFocus, then there is a new choice in the File menu to Replace Server Database.
• Fixed a bug where syncing a change to reactivate a folder wouldn't always update the derived state of its child folders and projects.
• Fixed a bug where the sync toolbar icon continued to be badged with the ! alert after a successful sync with a new database.

Miscellaneous

• Spotlight now indexes all projects from the main database, not just those which are incomplete. (It still doesn't index projects which have been archived.)
• Software update can ignore specific updates.
• Added support for secure and validated software update feeds.
• Updated our AppleScript terminology to use "open quick entry" rather than "activate quick entry". Hopefully this will eliminate the problems people have occasionally encountered in trying to activate the app itself. (Compiled scripts which used our old activate verb may need to be recompiled, however!)
• Quick Entry now honors all database settings, such as the default due time, hierarchical name separator, whether new groups should complete when their last item is complete, and the default project review period for new projects.
• Fixed a bug where extra line spacing between rows made it difficult to drag projects and folders by their icons.
• Fixed a bug where adding or removing a next action from a project wouldn't immediately update its style to indicate whether it's blocked.
• Fixed a bug in Style Preferences where selecting "default" as the background color would reset all settings for that style rather than just the background color.
• Fixed a bug where OmniFocus was inconsistently paying attention to the leading (or line gap) built into a font's metrics: it would honor it during normal rendering, but ignore it when editing. This would cause changes in line spacing when editing text from some fonts (including most Japanese fonts).

Snow Leopard compatibility

• OmniFocus 1.7 is fully compatible with Snow Leopard (Mac OS X v10.6), while maintaining compatibility with both Tiger (10.4) and Leopard (10.5).
• Fixed Quick Look support for image attachments when running under Snow Leopard.
• The OmniFocus Clip-O-Tron 3000 should work with the Snow Leopard version of Mail. If you receive a warning from Mail about the OmniMailMessageEnabler being disabled, open Clippings Preferences and re-install the Clip-O-Tron.