[whalt]

Originally Posted by curt.clifton

What if the drop-downs in the filter let you command-click to select multiple criteria? That would be quite powerful and likely very easy to use. (I actually just tried it to see if the Omni wizards had already snuck that in. No dice...yet.)

I suppose but it still seems like a rather limiting and non-inuitive UI. It still leaves the problem of having to reset it all the time or wait for Perspectives to get sorted out but then it's still functionality that's split into two seperate interfaces. A smart folder seems a bit easier to manage and has the added benefit of reusing UI that people are already comfortable with. As Steve Jobs would say, "What if you could find your most important tasks just like you find your favorite songs in iTunes?" Oh, that and "Boom."

[Lizard]

Originally Posted by curt.clifton

What if the drop-downs in the filter let you command-click to select multiple criteria? That would be quite powerful and likely very easy to use. (I actually just tried it to see if the Omni wizards had already snuck that in. No dice...yet.)

Another issue here is how exactly would the combined filters work? If two criteria were selected, would your action have to match both filters to be displayed? Or would matching either one be enough?

[whalt]

Originally Posted by Lizard

Another issue here is how exactly would the combined filters work? If two criteria were selected, would your action have to match both filters to be displayed? Or would matching either one be enough?

Again this is an area where a smart folder with it's pulldown selector for matching "any" or "all" would be superior.

Just to remind everyone of the kind of interface I'm talking about, here is the edit dialog from Mail.app for a smart mailbox.

[curt.clifton]

Originally Posted by Lizard

Another issue here is how exactly would the combined filters work? If two criteria were selected, would your action have to match both filters to be displayed? Or would matching either one be enough?

It seems like the "any-all" choice is straightforward for each of the drop-downs:

• Project/Context Kind. Besides the All choice, the other choices are mutually exclusive, so an "any" match would have to be used.
• Grouping. Multiple selections here would just givenmultiple levels of grouping, e.g., first by due date than by folder.
• Sorting. Multiple selections would yield a multi-key sort
• Task Kind. Many of the individual choices here already build. For example, next actions show for the next, available, remaining, and all filters. "Completed" is mutually exclusive with the other task-status selectors besides "All", so again an "any" match would have to be used. (I'm assuming that "Flagged" is moved to its own filter capsule as suggested.)
• Duration. For similar reasons as Task Kind, this would be an "any" match. For example, I might use this to show all my 5 minute tasks, plus tasks that don't have a duration--just in case I decide one of them is a quickie.

Whalt and others, please don't take my advocacy of extending the filter ribbon as an argument against Smart Folders. I think they would be a great addition, especially since they could include plain text searches and other things that are beyond the capability of the filter ribbon. But I also like the filter ribbon for ad hoc searches. Multiple selects in the ribbon would make it even more "ad hockey". :-)