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Moving stuff is a mess Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Absolutely not the drag and drop desktop experience I was hoping for.

Went a full day not knowing how in the world to re-order stuff in the sidebar. Read on the forum I had to hit the settings cog and "Edit Sidebar". Totally different behavior than the Action view (I.e. Click and hold). Totally different than how you move a Project (Move button in edit view)

Got totally confused why I couldn't see the Edit Sidebar option, then realized it only shows up when you hold it in portrait orientation.. Bug sent.

Clicking a project, bringing up edit view and then hitting Move gives me different options than I expected. I hit Move on an Action in a Single item list and the options it brought up for nesting that Action under another Action was total nonsense to me. I tried to make sense of it, but it felt random. Im pretty sure it even showed options outside my single action list.

I had left some unorganized stuff laying around that good screwed up using the iphone version cause I wanted to use OF iPad to reorder them. At first go, I'm not liking how disjointed it is.

I'm hoping this is something to be smoothed out in future releases. It ( Moving items) feels very unpolished for $40. I have desktop expectations since I spent $40 on the desktop SW.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by blewis View Post
Went a full day not knowing how in the world to re-order stuff in the sidebar. Read on the forum I had to hit the settings cog and "Edit Sidebar". Totally different behavior than the Action view (I.e. Click and hold). Totally different than how you move a Project (Move button in edit view)
Out of curiosity, did you read the Help documentation? It is documented, though I would agree that it isn't mentioned in all the places you might conceivably look. This isn't a case of "blame the victim" but rather "did the documentation fail the victim?"
[/QUOTE]
 
I didn't read the help.. I expected my years of desktop OF training to guide me.

Not an unreasonable expectation, but I do need to read the help section.
 
Yet it's still a mess even if it's a well documented mess. :-)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by blewis View Post
I didn't read the help.. I expected my years of desktop OF training to guide me.

Not an unreasonable expectation, but I do need to read the help section.
Well, OmniGraffle for iPad would be a disaster if it tried to have a UI that could be completely guessed from the desktop version. There are similarities, sure, but I don't believe that the gestural stuff is necessarily wrong if it isn't identical.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by whpalmer4 View Post
Well, OmniGraffle for iPad would be a disaster if it tried to have a UI that could be completely guessed from the desktop version.
But we're talking about OmniFocus, something that gets used way more frequently than OmniGraffle. I'm not sure why we shouldn't be able to carry our UI knowledge over from the Mac version; although interface elements should be a little bigger, there's no need to re-arrange stuff for the sake of it. What's the matter with having disclosure triangles on the left, as they always have been, and letting you drag and drop using them?

For the iPhone and iPad, Apple set up that list "Edit" paradigm where your flat list of contacts or playlist entries [or whatever] can be rearranged when you're in that special mode with the red delete buttons down the left and drag thumbs on the right. It works great, and is consistent across many iOS apps. But we're not dealing with a flat list in OF - we're dealing with a hierarchy, and the flat list UI stuff doesn't work here without ghastly workarounds. It's like Omni felt they had to try and use the flat list "Edit" paradigm just because it's an iOS app, when it doesn't suit the task.

The awful workaround (to not having a custom drag and drop hierarchical list UI class) is summed up in the dreadful 'Move...' popup. You spend most of your time looking at things nice and large, subconsciously getting to know the structure of your projects, and then when you want to move this to there, you can't just point there, no - you have to pull up a little map and indicate on that where you want this to go. Takes me a moment or two to get my bearings on the map, because it doesn't look like my project list.

Quote:
Originally Posted by whpalmer4 View Post
There are similarities, sure, but I don't believe that the gestural stuff is necessarily wrong if it isn't identical.
One doesn't expect it to be identical, but it should only be different if there's an advantage to it.

Example: Entering a list of actions on the Mac just requires you to hit Return after each one. There's a Return key on my iPad keyboard, too, but instead I have to hunt down that tiny "Done" button, and then choose and tap on a "New Item" button before I can start typing again. You made me take my hands off the keyboard! Why?! It's double, triple the hassle, when the Return key is Right There Dagnammit.

Sorry, don't wanna sound rude. It's only cos I love Omni and have become addicted to OF that I care this much... Non-life-changing software doesn't get me riled up in the same way.
 
Quote:
What's the matter with having disclosure triangles on the left, as they always have been, and letting you drag and drop using them?... It's like Omni felt they had to try and use the flat list "Edit" paradigm just because it's an iOS app, when it doesn't suit the task.
Well, part of the problem here is that the iOS doesn't have an outline view, like the Mac does. Whenever you see anything somewhat resembling an outline, it's actually faking it with a table view, which is just a flat list of cells (not even columns!), and it comes with that edit to re-order stuff built-in. The indent you see for action groups is probably just padding. Changing that so that it is always on---so that you can drag to reorder whenever you feel like it, would probably involve a ton of work. I don't know, I haven't looked at it, but since I have seen an example anywhere yet where you can drag items at any time, I'm guess it's non-trivial.

But, on the other hand, you can move things around in a hierarchy within a project. So long as an action-group already has one child action, items dragged next to that action will become children. So, you can drag around in 3D, a bit.

Quote:
Entering a list of actions on the Mac just requires you to hit Return after each one. There's a Return key on my iPad keyboard, too, but instead I have to hunt down that tiny "Done" button, and then choose and tap on a "New Item" button before I can start typing again.
Again, I think you are seeing the limitations of the device and OS here. I could be wrong on this one, but keyboard control in general seems awfully weak on the iPad---even if you have a keyboard dock. I don't think there is good control for shortcuts and such.

By the way, I always just tap and hold on the project title bar to add actions. Way easier, especially when in a list of many projects.
 
TaskPaper for iPad does hoist and move, indent or outdent. Just use it!
 
Oh that's true, I forgot about TaskPaper. It is still faking an outline with cells, but has that handy tap and hold to move trick. I don't know, the whole "edit mode" thing doesn't really bother me any more. It was kind of annoying years ago, when I first got an iPod Touch, but I've grown accustomed to it.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by howiem View Post
But we're talking about OmniFocus, something that gets used way more frequently than OmniGraffle. I'm not sure why we shouldn't be able to carry our UI knowledge over from the Mac version; although interface elements should be a little bigger, there's no need to re-arrange stuff for the sake of it. What's the matter with having disclosure triangles on the left, as they always have been, and letting you drag and drop using them?
Tell me, how much do I use OmniGraffle, hmm...? :)

One issue with putting the disclosure triangles and completion boxes on the left vs. the right is that putting them on the right puts them in the same place no matter the indentation level. While it seems like I should be able to tap an arbitrary spot on the screen just as easily as going there with mouse or trackpad, my experience on the iPad is that I'm faster if the boxes are always in the same spot.
 
 


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