[dsolomon]

I realize OF has undo, but I for one would love a preference to require "confirm before deleting" so that a message box would pop up asking to confirm.

It's easy to hit a wrong key, and deleting a task seems like something that by default should get a confirmation (just my opinion) - but at least having a preference gives people the option.

This was a loud request from the MLO community, and they added it as a preference - would love to see it in OF too.

(sending in via feedback too, but wanted to see if others concurred...)

[curt.clifton]

I understand why you might want that, but I am strongly opposed to confirmation dialog boxes in "undoable" situations. They train users to ignore confirmation dialogs altogether, and occasionally those dialogs are critically important. (I also understand that you're asking for a preference to control this, but I'm just addressing your desire "to see if others concurred.")

What I'd like to see instead is some lovely Core Animation goodness animating the deletion of the item. I'm imagining the item text being sucked into a black hole and the surrounding items gliding into the vacated space. That wouldn't just be eye candy. The half second "disappearing routine" is enough to help you realize that you just deleted something. If it was an accident, then you can undo it. (...imagining reversing the animation on undo... Man, I might just spend half the day deleting and undoing things.)

[ksrhee]

Originally Posted by curt.clifton

I understand why you might want that, but I am strongly opposed to confirmation dialog boxes in "undoable" situations. They train users to ignore confirmation dialogs altogether, and occasionally those dialogs are critically important. (I also understand that you're asking for a preference to control this, but I'm just addressing your desire "to see if others concurred.")

What I'd like to see instead is some lovely Core Animation goodness animating the deletion of the item. I'm imagining the item text being sucked into a black hole and the surrounding items gliding into the vacated space. That wouldn't just be eye candy. The half second "disappearing routine" is enough to help you realize that you just deleted something. If it was an accident, then you can undo it. (...imagining reversing the animation on undo... Man, I might just spend half the day deleting and undoing things.)

In fact, why not even add a sound effect (just like sending something to trash).

That would definitely get my attention.

[Eye_Doc]

Originally Posted by curt.clifton

I understand why you might want that, but I am strongly opposed to confirmation dialog boxes in "undoable" situations.

I agree with this one. There also is a sensation of speed that you get without a dialog box that allows your train of thought to flow a bit quicker.

[Toadling]

Originally Posted by curt.clifton

What I'd like to see instead is some lovely Core Animation goodness animating the deletion of the item. I'm imagining the item text being sucked into a black hole and the surrounding items gliding into the vacated space.

Even a simple "poof" animation might be nice. That's what TaskPaper uses when deleting a line with Command-K.

[charismatic]

Originally Posted by curt.clifton

I understand why you might want that, but I am strongly opposed to confirmation dialog boxes in "undoable" situations. They train users to ignore confirmation dialogs altogether, and occasionally those dialogs are critically important. (I also understand that you're asking for a preference to control this, but I'm just addressing your desire "to see if others concurred.")

What I'd like to see instead is some lovely Core Animation goodness animating the deletion of the item. I'm imagining the item text being sucked into a black hole and the surrounding items gliding into the vacated space. That wouldn't just be eye candy. The half second "disappearing routine" is enough to help you realize that you just deleted something. If it was an accident, then you can undo it. (...imagining reversing the animation on undo... Man, I might just spend half the day deleting and undoing things.)

Sometimes a good enough why really helps. Now I see the whole thing differently and may not want "deletion protection" but as someone noted a sound effect alerting you of your action would be the perfect alternative.

[coconino]

I reckon deleted items should be staged, by being put in a trash bucket. The problem with silent and immediate deletion in OmniFocus is not the purposeful deletions, or the accidental ones you notice right away, but those which sneak under the wire such as when deleting a folder which contains items which are invisible with current filters.

I also think that some sort of mouseover pop-up on folders and projects would be useful, giving a brief summary of the contents, visible or otherwise.

[charismatic]

Originally Posted by coconino

I reckon deleted items should be staged, by being put in a trash bucket. The problem with silent and immediate deletion in OmniFocus is not the purposeful deletions, or the accidental ones you notice right away, but those which sneak under the wire such as when deleting a folder which contains items which are invisible with current filters.

I also think that some sort of mouseover pop-up on folders and projects would be useful, giving a brief summary of the contents, visible or otherwise.

I agree. I also see others. I at least think people should have the option to select deletion protection or not.

[curt.clifton]

coconino,

Can you say a bit more about how this trash would work? Would it just be a place to collect deleted items so that the user could drag them back into place? It seems that could be accomplished now by creating a Trash project or folder. A bit of Applescripting and adding a hot-key to trigger the Send to Trash script would make this convenient as well.

Or are you envisioning the ability to select an item in the Trash and invoke an "undelete" command? That would be handy, but is really complicated in an outline; for example, the original parent might have been deleted subsequently.

[coconino]

Originally Posted by curt.clifton

Can you say a bit more about how this trash would work?

I'll leave how it would work to the UI experts. What I know is that currently it is frighteningly easy to unintentionally trash invisible items in the same action as intentionally trashing visible ones.

OmniFocus is a bit of an odd case in that its function requires that much of its content is hidden purposefully; almost every aspect of its proper function involves hiding data out of sight (and out of mind). Also, the hidden and visible content is intermingled in a complex manner. Therefore some sort of special protection seems to be required to prevent hidden items being removed when the user's action was expressly directed at deleting a visible item.

The undo function is too linear, requiring that the user realise at once that their action had unintended consequences, which may be true in many cases but not all.

I understand your earlier caveat about confirmation dialogs, but I don't think the use of a sound effect or animation quite hacks it either. It could be said that there are two different things going on with delete: firstly, the normal word-processor-type deletions made as part of the editing process, for which the undo feature has a good pedigree as being perfectly adequate; and secondly, the deletion of file-like and folder-like items for which the staged deletion of the Finder could be a closer analogy. The big difference with the Finder is that the content of a folder is always visible when the folder is open; in OmniFocus the content may or may not be visible, depending on view settings.

As a stop-gap I'd accept an alert on deleting a folder, to ask something like "This folder contains items which are hidden due to current view settings. Do you really want to delete this folder? [[cancel]] [delete]", but it's not ideal. Perhaps it should only be possible to delete a folder when the view is set to show "All Projects", with an alert appearing when attempting to delete in other circumstances.