[DamonC]

I have a few perspectives that were set to open in a new window. For instance, I have an Inbox perspective that opens in a new window without the filter bar and sidebar displayed. I also have a perspective called Today that opens a new window in Context view, displaying actions that are Due or Flagged and sorted by Due, again without the filter bar or sidebar.

If I select these perspectives now, they appear in the main OmniFocus window instead of opening a new window. The option to open a perspective in a new window seems to be missing from the perspectives window too. What's going on?

If I revert to default view, the window remains the same size, the sidebar doesn't display and I have to manually reset things. This is a productivity app, why is it making me unproductive?

[Greg Jones]

Perspectives have changed considerably in 1.7. You can see more on the changes and how to set up what you want to do (including opening a perspective while holding down the Option key to open a new window, and then saving the perspective) in this thread.

All my custom made perspectives are set to "Always open in a new window". Naturally having to hold down the option key to get this functionality back is gonna get very tedious very quickly!

Why remove this feature?

[Brian]

The post that Greg linked to provides more detail on what's going on here, but I can summarize for the benefit of folks that land in this thread.

OmniFocus 1.7 imports your perspectives from previous versions, but doesn't remove them. If you prefer it, you can download v1.6.1 from this link and continue to use it for the time being. I've got both versions installed in my applications folder - do the same, and you can get used to the new approach gradually, when you have the time/energy to do so.

The old perspectives interface was very powerful once you learned how it worked, but until you figured it out, it could be a real struggle to figure out how to make it do what you wanted. There were a ton of controls to wade through, and it was pretty confusing that built-in perspectives did things differently than any of the perspectives a user made.

Hopefully, with the new approach, we can make perspectives more consistent and predictable for new users without overly disrupting power-users' existing workflows. (Learning anything new is disruptive, but that doesn't mean that continuing to do the wrong thing forever is the right choice!)

That all said, our ears are open. If you feel like we overcorrected, send feedback and let us know what/why you need things added back.

[DamonC]

Originally Posted by Greg Jones

Perspectives have changed considerably in 1.7. You can see more on the changes and how to set up what you want to do (including opening a perspective while holding down the Option key to open a new window, and then saving the perspective) in this thread.

Thanks for providing the link, I'll have a read through that to understand why things have changed.

[eidehli]

I really appreciate the many 1.7 enhancements to perspectives, in particular that they are now synced between computers (and may come to the iPhone some day...)

However, the removal of the "open in new window" setting is a setback for me: I recently created a number of "pop-up" perspectives that I am opening several times a day. Since these "pop-up" perspectives hide the sidebar and toolbar, they are really never meant to replace the contents of my main OF window! I have assigned these perspectives both to toolbar icons and keyboard shortcuts for quick access.

I really need a way to define that these perspectives are meant to appear in separate windows only, so I don't accidentally change the contents and settings of my main OF view. In 1.7 it appears I must either remember to press the Option key while clicking the toolbar icon, or remember to first open a new window with Option Command N before typing my perspective keyboard shortcut. Since only some of my perspectives are meant to be used in pop-up mode, I will never remember to do this right every time...

[curt.clifton]

Be sure to use Help → Send Feedback to make sure Omni is aware of this. Your use case is a strong argument for adding this setting back to OF.

[Greg Jones]

Here is a script that can be added to the toolbar, with the perspective icon, and also assigned a shortcut with FastScripts. The script opens a new window and applies a perspective specified in the script. Duplicate the script and edit as needed for all the perspectives that require a new window. It's slower, and more trouble to setup, than opening a perspective in a new window in 1.6x, but it does work for now. The window size and position is not restored, but that could be added to the script also.

tell application "System Events"
	tell process "OmniFocus"
		click menu item "New Window" of menu "File" of menu bar 1
	end tell
end tell
tell application "OmniFocus"
	tell the default document to tell the front document window to set the perspective name to "YourPerspectiveName"
end tell

[DamonC]

Originally Posted by curt.clifton

Be sure to use Help → Send Feedback to make sure Omni is aware of this. Your use case is a strong argument for adding this setting back to OF.

I've posted my own case for this too. I really want to see it back in the application.

Originally Posted by Greg Jones

Here is a script that can be added to the toolbar, with the perspective icon, and also assigned a shortcut with FastScripts.

Thanks for the script Greg, this will tide me over until (hopefully) it's added back into the application.