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Greetings,

I was wondering of there is a way to change the way the "+" button works when entering data into projects. In the iPhone version of OF, the plus button adds new actions to the list but in the iPad version it brings up the option of adding to the project or adding to the inbox. I want it to just add to the project and save me a tap for every action I need to add. I know it is only one extra tap but it really adds up when you add many actions to a project (say a grocery list). Since the inbox is ever present in landscape mode, I feel it is just redundant to ask me again on the right hand side. Is this something I can disable or should this be something I email to OmniGroup in hopes of a change on their side?

Appreciate any help I can get.
 
No way I know of to disable it. Unless you are adding items with single-character names, though, it seems like the extra tap is lost in the noise...

Use Contact Omni in the gear menu to submit a feature request.
 
I find this irritating also. There's an open request for this option so please raise it as described above and that's +1 to the request :)
 
I think this either needs to be switch able in settings, or have two buttons (Inbox and Project) if it is to be changed.

The reason I say this is that it's really useful to have in portrait mode (when the inbox buttons are not immediately available.

I don't see the problem with how it is now though.
 
The double tap required to add new items to the currently viewed project (tap +, then tap to choose adding to Inbox or add to "project_name") is redundant in landscape mode, as there's a button on the left to add to the Inbox. However, that functionality is useful when in portrait mode (although I personally never use portrait mode) as the sidebar is not there.

My suggestion is for the + button to have different functionality depending on orientation – add to project only in landscape orientation, and the current dual choice behaviour in portrait mode.

This would be helpful when wanting to add multiple items to the same project, e.g. a shopping list.

Another way to do this would be to have a "Save and add new" button when entering a task, but I think that would not be as good.

I have submitted a feature request to The Omni Group for this.

I agree with the sentiment that it's only one extra tap with the current behaviour but, to my mind, one of the few drawbacks with the iOS implementations of OmniFocus compared to the Mac implementation is the lack of being able to rapidly add a number of items to a project or single action list, especially when you are on a roll.
 
One advantage to the current implementation is that it gets you uniformity of behavior regardless of whether you are in portrait or landscape mode. I do the double tap to get a new action in a project by muscle memory. Without that, depending on orientation, I have to move my hand to a completely different part of the screen (or use the other hand), and that would certainly break up the rhythm when entering tasks in quick succession.

Sure, viewed in isolation, it would be slightly quicker if I didn't have to make that extra tap to specify that the action was going to the current project, but the emphasis is on slightly. I took all of my remaining actions, stripped out the large collection of actions that were programmatically generated (email from Omni support, Curt's template script, raw URLs, etc.) and ran the rest through Mathematica to get a histogram of length:




Median length is 29 characters. Yes, I checked, there really is a 188 character action name, and as it happens, I did type it in by hand on the iPad! Even if we assume the projects all had contexts set, no dates needed to be set, and whatever other hand-waving one might do to make the assumption that the total number of taps required is very closely approximated by the length of the action name, that extra tap is clearly in the noise if you believe in action names that are descriptive. I'm not counting all of the extra taps needed for capitalization, numbers, symbols, either.

Grocery shopping I do with repeating actions for staple items, so there's actually rather little typing to be done there. If I strip off the "Buy " prefix I put on actions where I am to purchase something, leaving only the name of the item, and just look at purchases:



That extra tap is still in the low single digits as a percentage.

What I think would bring real value in this sort of situation is the ability to copy and paste multiple lines as multiple actions. If you've got an existing list somewhere, you don't want to retype it, and you don't want to copy and paste each line separately. If you don't have an existing list, but want to make one, the ability to copy the list via copy and paste and make multiple actions would allow you to use your text editing app of choice to make that list. Much more powerful!
 
Nice bit of research, whpalmer4! I can't help imagining what the 188 character action might have been :o)

I wonder if there's any mileage in a quick entry screen for iPad, as seen on the Mac? That would make entry of multiple actions much quicker, but I think your multiple row copy/paste idea would be great too.
 
 


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