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The Best and Worst of OmniFu Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Best:
- How easily OmniFu (the pre-alpha name) adapts to various users.

- the interface lets one get stuff into OF quickly, without going through a lot of steps. In a rush, I can just pick a project, enter a task, pop-up a context and type "today" -- all done. Other GTD programs I've tried make me go through two steps 1) type the task name into an Inbox; B) go back and fill out a complex form. I almost never use Quick Entry, and rarely use the InBox -- see the item above.

Worst:
- Review process seems half-implemented

- Human interface isn't finished

- Lack of internal documentation. Yes, I know this is an alpha, and it lacks help files, but that's not quite what I mean. KGTD had sections where the user could set up trigger lists, templates, review processes (daily, weekly, monthly, on out). Ethan had populated these with some stuff to get us started. I'd like to see something like this in OF — I need those trigger lists to clear my mind. Yeah, I could set up my own, but I need the seed ideas.

--Liz
 
Best Thing: Just downloaded OF SneakyPeak - Oh My! Thanks Ken.
Worst Thing: No notes/metadata capability (or rather, none that I've found yet) for folders. Just a discipline thing really, but it would help clarify the what, where, when and why...
 
Liz, the GTD incompletion triggers are on the 43folders wiki (down for maintenance at the moment, unfortunately): why not copy from there into wherever you find them useful (Yojimbo, text file, whatever)?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by al_f
Liz, the GTD incompletion triggers are on the 43folders wiki (down for maintenance at the moment, unfortunately): why not copy from there into wherever you find them useful (Yojimbo, text file, whatever)?
They're available from the Google cache of the 43folders wiki.
 
These are few of my favorite (and unfavorite things).

-------Best Features:
• Keyboard navigation! It's is so easy to create items in OF!
• Multiple selection - Being able to select multiple items and change attributes
• Groupings - I love the way OF groups items. Very simple and effective.
• Focus - The focus aspect is very handy.
• Quick Key Inbox - Yes.. I know you can use QS or LB. But I love using the OF quick key inbox addition. Then I don't have to remember the order of things for the QS entry.
• Clean interface
• Cool icons in the application
• Full Applescript support! - to the hilt!
• The Inbox Section - I love having an inbox in the application!
• Review dates - this is such a cool feature that I never thought of. By using review dates, I can review projects throughout the week, which almost eliminates the weekly review.

-------Worse Bugs -
• The view action item in project / context view is probably one of the most used commands for me. But it's a bit broken right now.

• Not storing completed Date when an project is completed. Without this... I have no reporting. If the completed date was stored, then I could at least group items by completed date.

• Completed decay time: I like having the item crossed out. But then I need to hit the clean up button. Would be cool to have them slowly disappear, so I can see the actions die a slow painful death... mumuthehahahahahah... ahem.

------- Things I really want:
I small repeating icon next to the completed checkbox. This would let me know that an item is repeating, so I don't have to double check to make sure it will come back. It would also allow me to create tasks like:
spend 30 min researching blahblah on the internet

When I get to the end of the 30 min, I click on the check box, and the item repeats tomorrow.

When I have completed this item... and don't need to research. Then I can click on the repeating icon next to the completed checkbox, which changes to item to non-repeating, and I can complete the item.

This solves the problem of spending 2 hours on an item researching it, still not having an answer, and not being able to complete anything for the day. :o

-------Things I haven't tested out enough yet:
iCal syncronization
eMail integration using Curt's applescripts
 
Praise: I love having the simple ability to see only the next action on each project, quickly and easily, if I want to. A couple of months ago I downloaded every GTD app I could find, and I was appalled to find that only Thinking Rock seemed to have the ability to do this (and not nearly as simply as in OF) (and in that heinous TR interface).

Gripe: The default time in the date picker is noon. When I set dates for actions, 99 percent of the time, I want that to take effect first thing in the morning.
 
A fork off the question's path, but the best thing about OF so far has been that I've let go of a long battle I had deciding on Palm Desktop (+ Palm PDA) or FileMaker (+ FileMaker Mobile) for task managment (I'd been using both in schizoprenic parallel for years). Both had their pro's and con's, but OF's simplicity caused me to move to it exclusively for tasks, and am now having fun effectively reviewing and GTD'ing my actions. I hope 10.5 brings notes round trip to the iPhone, then I can be fully computer<-->mobile with tasks/notes/contacts/calendar.

Bob
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by omnibob
A fork off the question's path, but the best thing about OF so far has been that I've let go of a long battle I had deciding on Palm Desktop (+ Palm PDA) or FileMaker (+ FileMaker Mobile) for task managment (I'd been using both in schizoprenic parallel for years). Both had their pro's and con's, but OF's simplicity caused me to move to it exclusively for tasks, and am now having fun effectively reviewing and GTD'ing my actions. I hope 10.5 brings notes round trip to the iPhone, then I can be fully computer<-->mobile with tasks/notes/contacts/calendar.

Bob
I'll drink to most of that!
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by al_f
Liz, the GTD incompletion triggers are on the 43folders wiki (down for maintenance at the moment, unfortunately): why not copy from there into wherever you find them useful (Yojimbo, text file, whatever)?
Oh, I have them, in Outliner format from Kinkless.

But it would be nice to, say during Weekly Review, open a text page within OF itself with the trigger list on it. [My laptop needs more RAM, the fewer programs I open, the happier it is.]

Likewise, it would be nice for OF to have a sample Weekly Review project built-in — one we could easily customize or delete, but ready for use.

In the Great Scheme of Things, this is a nit, and I know some enterprising AppleScript author could set these up easily, but GeekLady did ask for what we didn't like about the current OmniFu ...

--Liz
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by dduff617
i don't like how (for many configurations that i use) the filter selections look like they are column headers for the data in the project/task window (on the right) but aren't. the reason for this is obvious: these drop-down buttons show their current selected value, and for most of them, the allowed values are the same as the field names of the data being displayed.

on a related note, i also don't like how the project/task window (on the right) is tabular data, but does not display any column headers and does not provide the intuitive tabular data management features (like click on the top of a column to sort by the column, resize columns, drag columns around to reorder, etc.)

proposed solutions: a) put some more distinct visual "break" between the filter buttons and the project/task list window or move the filter buttons to their own inspector pane or something. b) make the task/project list look/act more like a normal list (with a header row).
I second this.
Forget about the View-bar at the top of the window.

Case:
The visual association to the columns underneath is too strong and as the items of the view-bar
have nothing to do with the contents of the columns this is most irritating.
(Through our visual experience with tables we are led to look for a contextual connection which doesn't exist in this case - irritating - cognitional dischord!)

Possible solution:
Upon clicking on "View" open a new inspector window (or sidebar).
Arrange the filter popups vertically and include a button to quickly change between: "show all" for all filter items and "return to selection" to undo "show all".
Change the View-icon slightly if any filtering is currently active to give a visual clue.

Possible additional opportunity:
Now you are free to insert a bar at the top of the columns for sorting each column (ascending and descending). You could have this sorting-bar toggle between visible/invisible just as the proposed View-Inspector.
 
 


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