[wolfneuralnet]

I rarely use the project mode -- if you could give us a video that shows the more common context mode or selects one of the contexts so we can see what tasks look like that would be great. My ideal interface would be this for the context view (see attached below1)

With the option to close the sidebar to this:

[see attached below2]

As you can see, I wasn't very productive yesterday!

Looking forward to seeing more, but regardless of the interface I will be thrilled to just get my hands on it. Thanks for giving the users an opportunity to give some UI feedback *before* everything is set in stone.

[zao]

First of all, thanks for the interface preview guys, I just can not wait for the OF on the iPad.
The design is not stunning, however I can feel from your posts we are commenting on some prototype ... so, I will concentrate my feedback on the functional area.

Just a few considerations about the target use cases for iPad [may be subjective, my case]:

1/ I have been using OF since the first release, consider myself an addict, organizing all my activities using OF. The main competitive advantage I see against Things is the ability to work through a lot of data quickly. Having 644 actions in 34 projects as of today, I tried Things twice - some features are compelling [such as the areas of responsibility for hard core GTDers], but it can not compete in the speed - just a simple example: creating new action by pressing <enter> is must have while shooting thoughts out of my head. PLEASE TRY TO KEEP THESE ADVANTAGES OF OMNIFOCUS, think about the users with keyboard dock or BT keyboards

2/ After week of iPad life, I found myself leaving the macbook air home most of the time. I believe the iPad version has to enable also tasks, which are not critical for the iPhone - such as the weekly review

The interface:

3/ While the iPhone is sort of ''tell me what to do now'' application, the iPad screen has the real estate to provide overview [which the iPhone lacks]. My real concern after having a look at the video is wasting the left pane for options I select and do not need to see until I want to see my data ''the other way round'' [switch from contexts to projects, to due view, or review]. This is a case for the pop-up menu I have seen you make use in OmniGraffle. I would love to see projects/contexts in the left pane, hiding the view selectors somewhere else.

4/ ''Dashboard'' would be highly appreciated. Quick overview of number of due actions in projects and contexts for today, overdue, inbox, someday/maybe. A simple graph showing the number of scheduled actions in the next few days would be cool.

5/ would it be possible to show number of due AND overdue in two bubbles, istead of showing the overdue and no due as soon as there is one overdue item in the context/project?

Hope the feedback from the community will help you
Should you consider a beta programme, I am in - OF is the app worth the testing time

Greetings from Prague
Ondrej

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by TripleM

For myself, the biggest shortcoming of the iPhone version is the awkward way in which one has to conduct weekly reviews. On the other hand, I love the desktop interface for reviews. I review exclusively on the desktop and that's no problem. I do, however, feel that being able to leave the laptop at home and conduct a desktop-style review on my iPad sitting on the patio at my local coffee shop would be dreamy.

Even worse, there's no way on the iPhone to actually mark the project as reviewed, which makes the otherwise wonderful support for variable review cycles useless unless you are at a Mac. Having the ability to mark a project as reviewed is near the top of my iPod/iPhone/iPad wish list, as there are countless otherwise wasted moments where I could whip out OF and review a project or two while waiting for someone to answer the phone, standing in line, etc. Without being able to see which projects next need reviewing and to track what I reviewed, I might as well let my kid play Labyrinth instead.

The other interface quality I love about the desktop is drag and drop processing of inbox items. I still struggle to remember how to turn an inbox item into a new project in the iPhone edition.

Tap the item (to select it), tap the refile button (looks like a file folder), tap Convert to Project. Within the confines of the available screen real estate on the iPhone/iPod, what would be more natural?

Side note: I can't proof read this because the text entry box doesn't scroll on my iPad.

Sure, it does. The trick is that you tap near the bottom of the text entry box as if changing the insertion point. Hold and drag your finger down beyond the bottom of the box and it will scroll, slowly.

[emck]

for me I think what is the issue is the indentation, I think if a user has 3 or 4 level of indentation it might look really bad vs on the iphone and mac version all projects are on the same level, not sure if that make sense?

also if you compare OmniFocus to things to me things is a lot nicer but that is just my opinion. the tools are all separated in the left pane and the list is in the right pane.

the right pane is brighter and the left pane darker. The Icons in things are brighter

[jasong]

It's so hard to give constructive criticism based on a four-second video. I feel like this is the Zapruder film, with the frame-by-frame dissections!

Here's mine:

* First reaction: that doesn't look right. It looks nothing like either the mac or the iphone version.

* Everything looks big, oversized, with a lot of wasted space.

* The disclosure triangles are all wrong. Disclosure triangles don't point up.

* The indentations will be quite troublesome with long project names and multiple indentations.

* It's unclear how notes will be handled. The one thing that appears to be a note is short, and no obvious way for seeing longer ones.

* It's unclear if I can tap a context to switch to it, or if I have to switch to Context mode and then find the item again.

* I like the idea of animating open the project, but that first jump to the left is disconcerting. It should animate out smoothly.


Overall, I'm disappointed by the 4-second preview. At this moment, I feel a blown-up iPhone version would continue to be a better solution, though not long-term.

Based on the preview, it doesn't feel like the interface has been rethought for use on an iPad. Instead it feels like it's been "skinned" to be "flashier".

At a basic level, I think you could have taken the Mac interface and made it work better on iPad.

Here's how I'd like to see it work:

- when in horizontal mode, the various "modes" (project, context, etc. maybe select perspectives too) would be on the left pane (as now).

- If I tapped (say) "Projects", that left pane would slide left, and the left sidebar would be the list of projects and folders. (Tapping a folder would progressively slide left to expose items)

- When I tap on a project name, the right pane would contain the list of actions for that project.

- The toolbars would contain the same items (or many of them) that the Mac version does (filtering, sorting, etc.)

- If I tap an action, an editing window would slide up from the bottom, allowing me to edit the contents, and see any notes attached (you can indicate a note is attached with a small icon somewhere; tapping that can also bring up a notes-only window).

etc.

I could probably spend hours writing something up, but you get my drift, I hope.

Summarizing:

* 4-second clip: underwhelming
* There's work that can be done to make this more iPad-friendly

I'm looking forward to the next iteration, whenever and whatever that might be.

[dwc]

FWIW...

1. the new action and Inbox boxes are too big
2. I'd prefer to see the project hierarchy in the sidebar
3. I'd prefer the sidebar column to be narrower
4. visually, the right column looks/feels clunky, I don't care for the nested look either, but I understand why it's there...I think
5. I'm hoping there is some control over font size, and column resizing would be swell
6. I like the view bar look in the Mac version, don't know if that will make the cut

That's 4 seconds worth. I'm just not excited about the look, but I appreciate you putting it up. I honestly expected something similar to the iPhone version that made better use of the real estate.

As with the Mac version, I'm less concerned with how it looks than how it works. I want to be able to leave my MacBook at home and feel like I can get most of my organizing done with the iPad version. The iPhone version for me is strictly for capture and light organizing.

Anyway, thanks. I'll buy it when it comes out and we'll work on improving it together as a community.

Dave

[Mr. Reeee]

How about posting a LINK to the video!

I came straight to the Forum and cannot find a reference to it.

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by Mr. Reeee

How about posting a LINK to the video!

I came straight to the Forum and cannot find a reference to it.

The problem is that this thread was broken off from the original, without taking the movie link along for the ride. Here it is:

http://people.omnigroup.com/kc/video...ad-sneak-peek/

[martinfbcampbell]

I too shared a "ouch" moment on the new UI, but here's what's positive, and what I would dearly want to be there...

The links to key views on the left look OK.
The facility to expand and contract folders and navigate through looks great.
The listing of actions is clear and nicely uncluttered.

And moving forward?

The controls on the left could be taken right down in size, and maybe placed across the top like in the desktop app - we don't need them often compared with the other features.

The nested folders could then sit on the left like in the desktop app.

The tasks could then be presented more like in the desktop app too.

I guess the theme is emerging here, and having connected up the iPad as an additional monitor to my mac and dragged the desktop app over to it, I've got to say that the desktop interface works just fine on the iPad's screen resolution. The overall scaling will have to come up a bit to accommodate my fat fingers, but that's all it needs.

I guess the overwhelming feeling is that the UI on the desktop app is right. The iPhone has a great subset of that UI. We don't need another one!

And what's all this about $20? You can certainly set your sights higher than that for the value that this thing will deliver!

[BwanaZulia]

I thought that the video was just an early mock up working design, so I didn't get too crazed about it, but if that is more like the final design than mock up, ouch.

A few thoughts...

- Why such a departure from the design on the Mac? Different icons? Colors? I don't get it. Consistency in UI is sometimes better than newness.

- Agree that the "New task" and "Inbox" icons are way too big. No need for that.

- The Folder background color (dark gray) and indented design is just pretty bad. Why have not have projects in a folder, actually attached to the folder, (like OSX UI).

Again, the biggest surprise is why make this like "new", just make it work "new" on the iPad, don't reinvent the wheel with every new platform.

BZ