[lmsboy]

Hey there,
since the last 2 sneaky-updates the counter badge always shows overdue and upcoming tasks as one badge (I cannot say 'show only overdue in badge' as I could before). Does anyone know if this is new to OF?

[whpalmer4]

From the change notes:

The Dock and Menubar badges now sum due soon and overdue items. If there are overdue items, the badge will be drawn in the overdue color. Otherwise, the due soon color is used.

Sidebar counts (in both Planning and Context mode) are now the sum of due soon and overdue items. (In the case of the Inbox, the count is always the total number of items in the Inbox, but the color of the badge will reflect whether the Inbox contains overdue or due soon items.)

[lmsboy]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

From the change notes:

The Dock and Menubar badges now sum due soon and overdue items. If there are overdue items, the badge will be drawn in the overdue color. Otherwise, the due soon color is used.

Sidebar counts (in both Planning and Context mode) are now the sum of due soon and overdue items. (In the case of the Inbox, the count is always the total number of items in the Inbox, but the color of the badge will reflect whether the Inbox contains overdue or due soon items.)

But why? This is really bad. Why I can't choose by myself what the badge should show in the menubar? I just want to see what's overdue. The sum of both is everytime shocking high and I've a dailylist. So I could never reach zero if both will sum from now on -.-

[whpalmer4]

I'm merely answering the question of whether or not the behavior you reported is a bug. It appears that it is not. You didn't ask if I agree with the change :-)

I do not believe you have ever been able to choose the behavior in OmniFocus for Mac; you do get to control the badge number for the iPhone/iPad versions by selecting which of Overdue/Due Soon/Flagged you want summed.

[lmsboy]

I hope it will be as before soon. This 'new' way isn't useful for anyone!

[whpalmer4]

Be sure to send in your feedback via Help->Send Feedback, and ask why the change was made. My impression is that changes like this to long-standing behavior are often driven by lots of customer feedback that the previous behavior was too confusing.

It seems to me that any attempt to represent a multi-dimensional quantity with a single number and color is bound to produce distortion. The new approach tends to overstate the severity (my inbox with 75 items waiting to be processed shows as a gray 75, add one overdue action and suddenly it is a red 76, no different than a large project that has gone completely off track!). The old approach can be misleading in the other direction, showing a red 1 for a project with 1 item overdue as of a few minutes ago, and 20 actions due later today, rather than the red 21 the new approach would show (which is probably closer to the truth). At least with the new scheme, your attention is likely to be captured, and an assessment of how dire the situation is made.

[Brian]

In case it helps, the emails this change is intended to help with were of two varieties:

1) "Why do the badges on the iOS apps and the Mac show different things?"

and

2) "I have one overdue item and 12 due soon items. Why the heck isn't OmniFocus warning me that I'm about to be swamped? I want to see 13, not 1..."

The folks requesting the change didn't like the old behavior; they felt that the lower number invited a false feeling of security, and they're going to regard the new one as a feature. (This isn't a bug, in other words.)

However, I can totally see how other folks might feel like LMSboy does about this change. The thing to do here is send the support ninjas an email and let 'em know that you feel that way, so we can try to make both groups happy in some manner before the final release of 1.8.3 ships. Thanks!

[lmsboy]

I did - more then one time ;)