[ptone]

Matt Neuburg has a new review up on OF. The review is pretty good, but he also has some screencasts that point out some pretty valid beefs with the OF UI - several of which I remember bringing up and discussing during the betas.

I don't mind the hovering column hints - and my OF doesn't beep at me, but there are some pretty valid points made. I know the column resizing was well hashed out, and I still think it is bizarre the way it is done. I think reordering outlines would really benefit from some larger grab tabs, and some animated reordering (ala dock reordering).

Anyway - with DF pointing to this review, it will be many people's first intro to this app.

-P

[Johno]

Matt Neuberg's review of OmniFocus: http://db.tidbits.com/article/9594?rss

He highlights the quirks of the interface that hopefully will get fixed in the near future.

[Splinky]

I'm a paid up user of OmniFocus, but this review (notably the videos) highlights the things that bug me to tears about OmniFocus. Especially the date thing, and the select-drag stuff. That is annoying.

[Ken Case]

That date thing bugs all of us! Unfortunately, it's a bug in the standard Cocoa calendar widget that we're using. I think our best bet is to go ahead and write our own nonstandard widget instead (which, ironically, is what Matt thought we were doing!), but we didn't have time to do that for 1.0. (And our focus for 1.1 is on synchronization.)

I think we can make the drag points clearer by changing the cursor to indicate whether you're over the right point or not.

What else bugs you?

[Toadling]

This has been discussed in detail in a thread back in May.

http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=7886

While some of Mr. Neuburg's criticism are valid, I think others are ill-informed and sensationalized.

-Dennis

[Ken Case]

Double-clicking on a project normally opens it in a separate window; the beeps he was hearing come from double-clicking on a row that can't be opened in a separate window. (If we can't do the double-click action, it makes sense to fall back on the single-click action instead of beeping.)

[mpw]

As much as I love OF, I do have to agree with a lot of Mr. Neuburg's complaints. Many of the things bugged me until I found out how they work and how I need to interact with them. Many of the things still bug me.

Maybe some day some of the issues could be addressed? But until then, keep on concentrating on what you've been concentrating on because that is really hot stuff!

[iNik]

Some areas for improvement, especially around UI and expectations, and pardon the lengthy post...

FOCUSED REGION

Matt's point that focus (sidebar vs. content) is unclear is a major point of confusion for me. I've completely given up on the Expand/Collapse All menu items because it takes a click+command in order to be sure I'm doing the right thing. Not sure how best to accomplish this, but it would be nice if that were easier. Maybe just highlight the focused area? Dunno.

DROP DOWN SELECTION WEIRDNESS

Matt hit this one on the head. Escape backs you out. Period, end of story. Tabbing past a field, clicking an item on the drop down, hitting return, maybe even hitting space should enter the value, but that's it.

Another annoyance: When my cursor is in a "combo box" field (e.g. context/project), a click on the menu arrow isn't sticky. I have to click-drag (like an OS 9 menu) in order to select an item. If the cursor isn't in the field, it's sticky. It should always be sticky. (Aren't custom UI elements a bitch?)

While my cursor's in there and actively editing, I think a down-arrow should bring up the menu of choices. Maybe not, I dunno. I keep expecting it to, though.

WHERE DID ALL MY TASKS/PROJECTS GO?

It is unclear when I'm focused/filtered/whatever a lot of the time. This happens a lot, actually. I find myself stuck in a moment of confusion because what I EXPECT to find is not there.

The little filtery doo dahs at the top of the list are a step in the right direction. I can scan them and see what's what. But what if I'm focused? Hmm... All I have is the "Show All" button on the toolbar, and it's not terribly obvious that it's in a non-standard state.

It gets doubly weird when I have multiple windows with different focus.

Highlighting things (make the filter doo-dah "glow" or something when it's filtering maybe?) and noting focus somehow (maybe a little focus-eyeball next to the project names?) would be very helpful, especially with a quick click to get back to defaults ACROSS EVERYTHING, just like the (x) in the doo-dah section.

I'm aware that there are tons of indicators, but I have to look at ALL of them to know what's going on. That few seconds of confusion and frustration really breaks my MENTAL focus.

PERSPECTIVES

I love these things. One weirdness: If I click on a perspective button more than once, it changes my focus from the Inbox to the Library. Weird.

SEARCHING

Search defaults to searching my current branch of the tree. This is a pain. If I'm searching, I generally will want to search globally, because I'll be in, say, a context and be reminded of another task I need to look at.

Even worse, if I want to DO a global search, I need to select both the Inbox/No Context and the Library/Contexts sidebar items. Ugh!
My preference would be to have search default to a global search, and then have the option to restrict to visible items. (Ideally letting you filter after the search is entered, a la Finder searches)

Also, CMD+F should get you to that search box, not to the text search. VERY confoozling.

INSPECTOR

CMD+I. That's all. I'm inspecting a lot more than I'm italicizing.

PERSPECTIVES

I'd love the ability to multi-select criteria (e.g. show active and dropped) within perspectives.

Why just there? Because building the UI for doing that on the fly would be terribly hard, and probably very very confusing. Making an advanced Perspective interface would be less confusing and completely hidden from folks who don't need it. (Think of Word's style sheet definition window as opposed to "update to match selection")

CLEAN UP

Is this really necessary? Can it be automatic, maybe do it when I click out of the inbox? Maybe just as a preference? I sometimes get confused when I set a context and project for an inbox task, click to the appropriate perspective/context, and it ain't there.

DOCK THE INSPECTOR

I'd love to be able to attach the inspector palette to the window so it doesn't overlap stuff. Maybe I'm crazy.

Anyhoo, those are the thoughts off the top of my head. It's hard to write this because I've become accustomed to so many of OF's idiosyncrasies at this point. But the app IS confusing AND hard to learn, and these little weirdnesses are part of it. I'm sure there's other things that could be improved as well, and basic usability should really be a focus for the 1.5 or 2.0 release.

Which is a back-handed way of saying that I'm really glad you're soliciting our opinions and improving the software day by day. Thanks!

[Brian]

merged the new thread with the existing one.

[Toadling]

Originally Posted by iNik

Matt's point that focus (sidebar vs. content) is unclear is a major point of confusion for me. I've completely given up on the Expand/Collapse All menu items because it takes a click+command in order to be sure I'm doing the right thing.

I think this is a problem common to many OS X apps. They all suffer from this deficiency, but it's more apparent in OmniFocus because of things like the Expand/Collapse All menu.

Originally Posted by iNik

When my cursor is in a "combo box" field (e.g. context/project), a click on the menu arrow isn't sticky. I have to click-drag (like an OS 9 menu) in order to select an item. If the cursor isn't in the field, it's sticky. It should always be sticky.

Oh yeah, good one. That's been bugging me for a while too but I had kind of forgotten about it (usually access those fields by tabbing from the keyboard).

Originally Posted by iNik

Also, CMD+F should get you to that search box, not to the text search. VERY confoozling.

No, that's standard OS X behavior. Command-Option-F goes to the search field in the toolbar (*when appropriate) and Command-F brings up the search dialog window (*when appropriate). Just about every app in my dock works this way: Mail, Safari, iTunes, Finder, NetNewsWire, Yojimbo, MarsEdit, etc.

*I say "when appropriate" because not all apps have/need both facilities.

Originally Posted by iNik

I'd love the ability to multi-select criteria (e.g. show active and dropped) within perspectives.

Yeah, maybe we need smart folders and perspectives.

Originally Posted by iNik

CLEAN UP

Is this really necessary? Can it be automatic, maybe do it when I click out of the inbox? Maybe just as a preference?

According to the documentation, it is automatic after an unspecified period of time; and I've seen it happen automatically. Maybe a preference to set that amount of time is in order?

For the record, I persoanlly prefer the current, mostly-manual clean up behavior. I don't want things disappearing from under my nose unless I explicitly ask the app to do it.

Originally Posted by iNik

I'd love to be able to attach the inspector palette to the window so it doesn't overlap stuff. Maybe I'm crazy.

Yeah, I'd like that too.

-Dennis