[cashdollar]

Read the article and watched the screencast. wow. He makes some good points, much of which I'm sure the good folks at omni are aware, and anyway they've always been responsive and open to comments.

But come on how over the top can you get. Mr. Neuberg seems just a tad bit high strung. I could see him having a meltdown because someone bought him regular instead of jumbo paperclips.

Just a little bit of perspective. This is a 1.0 product, and it's very solid. It's well built enough that it can be that "trusted system" What if Apple built a GTD app, what would their 1.0 product look like? Consider past performance:

OS X.0 - glacial
Pages 1.0 - worst than glacial and bug ridden
Numbers 1.0 - more bug ridden than a Bolivian pleasure palace
I could go on but I'll leave you with the last image...

There are certainly oddities, but it's solid. I don't constantly worry about dumping or losing information. Overall it's a great 1.0 effort and more importantly, it's a really thoughtful approach to GTD.

[iNik]

Originally Posted by cashdollar

Mr. Neuberg seems just a tad bit high strung. I could see him having a meltdown because someone bought him regular instead of jumbo paperclips.

As a long-time reader and member of the TidBITS community, I can assure you that Matt is more melodramatic than close to melting down. TidBITS in general is full of sometimes curmudgeonly but extremely smart people who have INCREDIBLY high standards. (You should read some of Adam's articles about keyboards -- he makes John Gruber look positively laid back on the subject!)

I think this kind of detailed critique is entirely apt for OmniFocus. It's a somewhat strange program, intended to support "maximizers" who want to streamline and customize every aspect of their workflow. For these people, having confusion or "congnitive dissonance" in one of their main tools is very frustrating.

And look at the great discussion Matt's criticism has created! I have no doubt that this particular forum topic will give Omni a wonderful laundry list of small and large tweaks to improve OmniFocus in the future months and years.

[iNik]

Originally Posted by iNik

It is unclear when I'm focused/filtered/whatever a lot of the time... Highlighting things (make the filter doo-dah "glow" or something when it's filtering maybe?) and noting focus somehow...

Pardon me for quoting myself, but I had a little epiphany on a (seemingly simple) change that would make this easier: Keep the focus button "depressed" when focus in one, just like you do with Perspective buttons when you're in a perspective. Then there would be a nice visual cue in addition to the changed icon when you're focused on something.

Originally Posted by Toadling

standard OS X behavior [is that] 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.

The standard OS X find dialog is great for textual find & replace operations on text. It's not very useful for searching lists of items -- that's better served by filtering. Applications that are less text-dependent, and especially programs that are lists or catalogs of large quantities of items, are better off filtering, rather than searching. Many applications, including a number of Apple's mainstay apps, eschew the Find/Replace dialog entirely, or limit its use to certain situations.*

OmniFocus is at heart a catalog/list program and has more in common with iCal than TextEdit. There are very few times I would ever want to do a mass find/replace operation in OmniFocus.** If all I want to do is find items, filtering is much more useful.

I admit that I'm picking nits here, but it's an important point. I'm not just complaining about the extra work of having to hold down option in order to do a filter/find.*** Filtering is at the very CORE of OmniFocus' design! Filtering (dare I say, "focusing?") is exactly what contexts, projects, view filters and grouping, perspectives and focus are all about.

OmniFocus may have its roots in OmniOutliner, but the two programs are very different. An outliner is a structured text editor, even if it is also used for lists. OmniFocus, on the other hand, IS a listing program. It lists tasks. Period.

Footnotes

* Here's a short (hah!) list of programs in my dock that choose their own method of handling a CMD+F find, many of which are Apple's own bundled applications.

• The Finder (in Leopard at least) switches to/opens a search-style window and puts the cursor in the toolbar search field.
• Apple's PIM apps, iCal and Address Book, both go straight to a filter box on a CMD+F.
• Safari falls somewhere inbetween with its own weird little drop down that sort-of-filters (highlights) and also finds/find-nexts.
• iTunes, frustratingly enough, doesn't do a darn thing on a CMD+F, but does go to the toolbar search on a CMD+opt+F.
• iPhoto goes straight to the filter-search, as the text-based find/replace would be entirely useless.
• Preview probably has the best Find method of any application. CMD+F filters the document to pages containing the search term, but ALSO highlights and CMD+G's through every instance of the term within the document.
• 1Password goes to the filter-search on a CMD+F, even though it's notes fields and items can contain a great deal of text.
• And other apps (Yummy Soup, for example) only enable the textual find/replace when you're in a rich text editing mode/area.

** The only place there's any large amounts of text is in the notes area. These notes may be long, but they're generally clippings/references from other programs, and are not usually edited in any substantial fashion.

This is also an argument for binding CMD+I to show/hide the inspector palette, rather than italicize items. If you're spending your time formatting and perfecting notes, you probably aren't the target audience for a super-charged task management program like OmniFocus!

If you're making pretty presentations out of your task list, get OmniPlan with its gorgeous print layouts and Gantt charts!

*** Although this keypress is uniquely carpal-tunnel-inducing. On a MacBook keyboard (which lacks a right option key), a touch typist ends up contorting her hand into a painful claw, with her thumb and pinky holding down CMD and OPT while her pointer finger hits the final F. CMD+SHIFT combinations are infinitely easier on the fingers.

[Lucas]

Originally Posted by iNik

*** Although this keypress is uniquely carpal-tunnel-inducing. On a MacBook keyboard (which lacks a right option key), a touch typist ends up contorting her hand into a painful claw, with her thumb and pinky holding down CMD and OPT while her pointer finger hits the final F. CMD+SHIFT combinations are infinitely easier on the fingers.

You can replace the key shortcut in the Keyboard & Mouse control panel.

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by iNik

*** Although this keypress is uniquely carpal-tunnel-inducing. On a MacBook keyboard (which lacks a right option key), a touch typist ends up contorting her hand into a painful claw, with her thumb and pinky holding down CMD and OPT while her pointer finger hits the final F. CMD+SHIFT combinations are infinitely easier on the fingers.

Maybe all those years of playing the violin, piano, and Emacs paid off; I didn't even notice that CMD-OPT-F was awkward until you told me :-) Perhaps taking the option key with the ring finger would be easier? Or use the ring and pinky to hold the two modifier keys. Or the thumb right in the gap between the keys. I'm a rapid touch-typist and spend most of my time on my Macbook, often in the dark with nothing but screen backlight to illuminate the keys, and I use all of those "alternative" combinations depending on how the 'book is positioned. I find Option-shift and Control-shift combinations
to be the most inconvenient for me.

[iNik]

Originally Posted by Lucas

You can replace the key shortcut in the Keyboard & Mouse control panel.

Err... I knew that. :P

Thank you. My life has become one notch better.

[Toadling]

Originally Posted by iNik

The standard OS X find dialog is great for textual find & replace operations on text. It's not very useful for searching lists of items -- that's better served by filtering. Applications that are less text-dependent, and especially programs that are lists or catalogs of large quantities of items, are better off filtering, rather than searching. Many applications, including a number of Apple's mainstay apps, eschew the Find/Replace dialog entirely, or limit its use to certain situations.*

OmniFocus is at heart a catalog/list program and has more in common with iCal than TextEdit. There are very few times I would ever want to do a mass find/replace operation in OmniFocus.** If all I want to do is find items, filtering is much more useful.

I agree, but that is beside the point. I'm simply trying to say that, for better or worse, the convention in Mac OS X seems to be Command-Option-F for moving focus to the toolbar search field, and Command-F to invoke the search/replace dialog. As you point out, some apps have customized behavior, but I think they're the exception rather than the rule.

And even if we can't agree that Command-Option-F is the standard shortcut for the toolbar search field, the key combination is at least commonly used in many, many apps. For example, I see Apple's Dictionary app works this way too.

So using those same shortcuts in OmniFocus should not be a big surprise or be particularly confusing for most users familiar with other OS X software. It feels natural to me.

That being said, I do agree that OmniFocus is more of "list" program and that most users are probably going to do a lot more filtering on rows than text-based searching/replace (although the search/replace dialog still has its place and should not be removed). So maybe OmniFocus should deviate from the convention, like iCal, and use Command-F for the toolbar search fields. But I'm not convinced there's any serious design flaw here.

Originally Posted by iNik

The Finder (in Leopard at least) switches to/opens a search-style window and puts the cursor in the toolbar search field.

But the Finder also responds to Command-Option-F to place the cursor in the toolbar search field without entering any special modes, leaving the window in it's current state. So at best, this one's a draw. :) Besides, a text-based search/replace dialog doesn't make much sense in that context.

Originally Posted by iNik

Apple's PIM apps, iCal and Address Book, both go straight to a filter box on a CMD+F.

Like the Finder, Address Book also places the cursor in the toolbar search field with Command-Option-F. So it's another draw. And, like the Finder, a text-based search/replace dialog doesn't make much sense in that context.

iCal, I grant you, seems to be an exception. If there's no use for a text-based search/replace dialog, I think it makes better sense to have both Command-F and Command-Option-F position the cursor in the toolbar search field (like Address Book and Finder).

OmniFocus, however, requires both the a search/replace dialog and the toolbar search field, so maybe iCal isn't a good comparison.

Originally Posted by iNik

Safari falls somewhere inbetween with its own weird little drop down that sort-of-filters (highlights) and also finds/find-nexts.

But I disagree! That "weird little drop down" is just a reformatted text-based search/replace dialog (minus the replace capabilities since content is read-only), and it's invoked with Command-F. And Safari supports the standard convention of using Command-option-F for the toolbar search field

Originally Posted by iNik

iTunes, frustratingly enough, doesn't do a darn thing on a CMD+F, but does go to the toolbar search on a CMD+opt+F.

Standard behavior. No practical need for a text-based search/replace dialog. In this case, Apple should probably make both shortcuts place the cursor in the toolbar search field, just like Finder and Address Book.

Originally Posted by iNik

iPhoto goes straight to the filter-search, as the text-based find/replace would be entirely useless.

Yeah, this one certainly supports your claim. It seems they use Command-Option-F to go into fullscreen editing.

Originally Posted by iNik

Preview probably has the best Find method of any application. CMD+F filters the document to pages containing the search term, but ALSO highlights and CMD+G's through every instance of the term within the document.

I really like Preview's search behavior - very well done. But I'll also point out that, like Finder and Address Book, Command-Option-F also places the cursor in the toolbar search field. Apple did the right thing in allowing either shortcut to work since there was no need for a traditional search/replace dialog window.

Originally Posted by iNik

And other apps (Yummy Soup, for example) only enable the textual find/replace when you're in a rich text editing mode/area.

OmniFocus works differently here, though, because you can do textual search/replace across multiple row objects (database items). So it wouldn't make much sense to have it only enabled when in text editing mode.

Originally Posted by iNik

The only place there's any large amounts of text is in the notes area. These notes may be long, but they're generally clippings/references from other programs, and are not usually edited in any substantial fashion...

If you're spending your time formatting and perfecting notes, you probably aren't the target audience for a super-charged task management program like OmniFocus!

I think that depends on what kinds of tasks you're managing in OmniFocus. For me, a big part of my usage is tracking bug fixes for my job. In those cases, I often write up several paragraphs in the notes field describing what happened so I can reference them later. Sometimes I even paste in snippets of code.

So for me, search and replace is very handy. And rich text formatting is not just to make things look pretty; it improves legibility by allowing me to make bold headings and display code in a fixed-width font, etc.

-Dennis

[iNik]

Toadling, your points and observations make good sense.

Personally, I'd hate to work in OmniFocus in such an information-heavy fashion; I see it as a quick task management application and not much more. But then, it's all too easy to think that I am the "normal" user, isn't it? :)

I've always found OF's notes fields to be pretty difficult to work with for large amounts of text since they're inline with everything else and often invisible. Do you find OF sufficient for handling all that text?

[Toadling]

Originally Posted by iNik

I've always found OF's notes fields to be pretty difficult to work with for large amounts of text since they're inline with everything else and often invisible. Do you find OF sufficient for handling all that text?

Yes, I find OF to be quite capable in this area, especially with a bit of styling to help break things up (e.g. a sprinkling of bold text and a few carriage returns).

I suppose there's a practical limit to the amount of text you'd want to squeeze into the notes field, but I've found that it easily handles a few paragraphs, maybe even up to a full page in rare cases. If I have more information than that, I link in an external document (usually a plain text or OmniOutliner file).

For this situation, I actually prefer inline notes over notes in a separate pane. Inline notes allow me to view multiple entries at once and skim down the entire project, seeing everything in order (select all and hit Command-' to open all notes at once). It's also immediately clear which notes belong with which actions. It feels very much like a text editor with the ability to collapse/fold individual items. This is also how I've worked in OmniOutliner for years.

However, it would be nice to have the option to view notes in a separate pane like OmniOutliner allows. In cases with very large chunks of text (say, more than a single page), I think the separate pane format starts becoming more attractive. Such an approach works well for traditional database apps like Yojimbo. OmniFocus, on the other hand, feels more like a document than a database, even though it's clearly a database too.

-Dennis

[Lizard]

see also http://blog.omnigroup.com/2008/06/25...-of-omnifocus/