[jasong]

Originally Posted by Brian

We do have a feature request open on changing that filter to behave the way you'd prefer. I went ahead and attached your original email to that item in the support database; the team will know you'd like them to change the filter to take focus state into account.

It's a bad habit to respond to year-old threads, I know. I'm seeing someone about that. They tell me I should go cold turkey and open a brand new thread, but I just... can't.

Any word on this issue being resolved? It's still present in 1.9. (I haven't gone looking for any sneakypeeks recently though).

This is still a frustrating hole in my workflow, especially when I'm focused on a particular work project, and want an overview of what needs to be done where/how/by who, but I see "Groceries" as a Context.

I've had to resort to a Perspective that hides the sidebar, groups by Context and closes all the Contexts, but that's just icky.

(Yes, that's the technical term. I'm in engineering.)

Coming Soon, perhaps?

[Brian]

I'm really sorry for the stress this is causing; I've been in that place where something like this bugs me, and I know how annoying it can be to not see the issue get the attention you want it to get.

The item is still open in the development database, but I don't have any info on when this might make it into the app. It looks like we haven't had any additional reports about this from other customers since the last conversation. If other folks are noticing this and are bothered by it, they aren't emailing us about it.

Given that, we feel like we have to spend our engineering time on issues that affect a greater number of customers. Again, I'm really sorry.

[jasong]

Totally understand priorities.

I'm more surprised by the lack of reports than by it not being fixed. Either folks aren't using focused projects, aren't bugged by seeing empty, unrelated contexts, or my workflow is rather unique.

This seemed like a normal everday usage: focus on a project, switch to Contect mode, see list of Active contexts with actionable items within that focus.

[whpalmer4]

When I'm focused on a project, there's a decent chance it is a sequential project, and so a next action project mode view with the sidebar collapsed offers minimal distraction. If it is largely parallel in nature, or I'm focusing on a handful of projects (the most common scenario of the three for me), a context mode view grouped by context or possibly due is going to be the most convenient. In either case, the sidebar holds no useful information that isn't also found in the outline panel, so ignoring it comes naturally, and I may close it just to reclaim the real estate.

I don't understand why you regard the closed sidebar, collapsed context groups approach as "icky":





The former seems cleaner to me if I'm trying to avoid distraction; no sidebar to click on, no duplication of context names, no "No Context" bin that doesn't have any relevance (to be consistent, I think you should be asking that it also not be shown if all the actions have contexts). Depending on the mix of items across the contexts, I might still go with that project mode view.

For what it is worth, I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with the behavior you propose, but I think you can already do better (given your stated reasons) with the product as it is.

[clayc]

i also find this annoying because in my 'focus' perspective i like to be able to focus closer on just one context by clicking it in the sidebar. this is very difficult in the current system because basically all contexts are shown in the sidebar, most of which are empty if you click on them.

i will send an email to support progress in this area.

its funny that focus is an issue for omnifocus :)

[jasong]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

I don't understand why you regard the closed sidebar, collapsed context groups approach as "icky".

Mainly because I use the sidebar to select a specific context or set of contexts to further limit the view of stuff I'm acting on at any given time.

That's why having unnecessary contexts is distracting, and why hiding the sidebar, while doable, is "icky". It's a workaround to an issue we (probably) shouldn't be having.

I agree that hidden it's cleaner, and I would likely hide it after selecting the set of contexts I'm acting on.

I also agree that No Context should also be hidden if there are no items inside the No Context context. (However, I find that I rather often have no context projects so it's seldom an "issue"....)

[stormy]

This one just bit me. One of my "waiting for" contexts was showing in context mode, filtered by Active contexts. I had to find projects that had it selected as the default context. This cured it.

[stormy]

A couple of years later, the bug lives on in the latest version :(

[psidnell]

It's not so much a bug as a tradition.