The Omni Group
These forums are now read-only. Please visit our new forums to participate in discussion. A new account will be required to post in the new forums. For more info on the switch, see this post. Thank you!

Go Back   The Omni Group Forums > OmniFocus > OmniFocus for iPhone
FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

 
Scrolling crash in "Nearby" screen showing Next Actions [Reproduced; working on fix.] Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I haven't used the "Nearby" feature of OmniFocus much, but while running some errands today, I found it useful for tracking down a grocery store. However, when I got to the grocery store and started checking off items from my grocery list, after a few items Omnifocus would crash. Restarting Omnifocus would show that the items I'd checked off were now unchecked. This repeated every time I tried to check off items. It appeared that there was some network activity going on in the background, which I'm guessing was the various business searches finding other nearby locations. I've been trying to recreate it now while I'm at home with a test context with a business search location and I'm not able to repeat the crash, but while I was in the store, Nearby was unusable. Any idea what might have been going on here?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by curiousstranger View Post
I haven't used the "Nearby" feature of OmniFocus much, .... However, when I got to the grocery store and started checking off items from my grocery list, after a few items Omnifocus would crash. Restarting Omnifocus would show that the items I'd checked off were now unchecked. Any idea what might have been going on here?
I have no idea what's going on but it's been annoying me from the very first release of the App. I filed a bug way back in the day and nothing has happened. It seems like there was maybe a build or two where it didn't happen... but it still crashes on me whenever I check off an item and then scroll after it.

The "solution", if you will, is to hit the "Nearby" crosshairs immediately after you've checked off an item. The app then re-loads the Nearby view with your checked item removed.

That prevents the crash. It is annoying to fix it this way because it changes your view. I've also found it is very unreliable in updating the Next Action based on what you've just cleared out. Seems like I have to go to another screen and then return to Nearby to force an event update. I don't get it, checking off an item should be a significant enough event for the app to evaluate what the Next Action is.

Anyway, I use the feature less and less and just use the Context view because of this long outstanding bug.
 
Crashers on the phone are hard - until very recently, Apple hadn't made the crash report information that was being collected available to us. Prior to that, unless we could reproduce the issue consistently, it was difficult to make headway.

For what it's worth, I see six "nearby" crashers in the database; five fixed, one assigned to an engineer for more attention. Trust us, we're not ignoring reports. :-)

When you guys see this, was a sync happening? While trying to repro problem, I was able to crash the app twice if I checked items off, triggered a sync, and scrolled...
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by blewis View Post
Seems like I have to go to another screen and then return to Nearby to force an event update. I don't get it, checking off an item should be a significant enough event for the app to evaluate what the Next Action is.
The iPhone is awesome, but the screen is small, folks may be distracted while using it, and there's no undo support. If you check something off accidentally, you have a chance to correct yourself. On the phone, leaving the screen is the equivalent of the "Clean Up" button we have on the Mac.

This is intended as a feature, protecting you from errors that may be extremely difficult to recover from. I can see your point, though - suggestions for alternate solutions are welcome, of course.

(I'll write up a feature request for leaving the checked items visible but moving the next action style, at the very least.)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian View Post
(I'll write up a feature request for leaving the checked items visible but moving the next action style, at the very least.)
It would also be nice if it would pop up the next action promptly when set to show next or available actions only! I don't mind if the previous one sticks around for a while, but when the iPod goes to sleep after a minute and the next action still hasn't appeared until I wake it up again, that's not exactly the best idea to come from the Omni hive, in my opinion :) The "go back to the previous screen and return" tactic is particularly annoying when the previous screen is more than a screenful of items and you have to scroll down to get back to where you were!
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian View Post
When you guys see this, was a sync happening? While trying to repro problem, I was able to crash the app twice if I checked items off, triggered a sync, and scrolled...
No sync. I was in the grocery store, so my Macbook not in the vicinity ;) That being said, as I mentioned in my original post, there was some network activity going on, as evidenced by the spinny wheel in the iPhone status bar. I'm assuming it was further business searches going on.
 
Yeah, we do update the business searches, but I'm able to check off a whole bunch of actions in that screen, scroll around, etc without crashing.

If there are any crash reports on your machine from around when this happened, it would be helpful to send them along to the support ninjas.

If they're there, they'll be stored in
<your user name>/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice/<name of iPod/iPhone>

Last edited by Brian; 2009-05-28 at 07:37 PM.. Reason: two "/Library"s are not better than one. :-)
 
Found and sent. Thanks!
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by curiousstranger View Post
No sync. I was in the grocery store, so my Macbook not in the vicinity ;)
What's the matter with you?!? Until about a month ago, I always had my MacBook with me in the grocery store :) The iPod is a bit more convenient in some ways, I'll admit!
 
Thanks for sending in the reports, guys - we've managed to reproduce the problem.

It looks like the combination of contexts set to display next actions, a low-memory condition on the phone, and checking off the very last item in the context is what's causing the crash.

We're handing it off to a different engineer for a true fix for the problem, but the one I worked with today thinks it won't happen if you switch to showing available actions in the contexts view while you're in the nearby screen.
 
 


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
"Active Contexts" showing with no "available" actions? jasong OmniFocus 1 for Mac 28 2013-08-29 09:03 AM
"Nearby" location-based contexts return incorrect results endoftheQ OmniFocus for iPhone 11 2010-07-31 12:19 PM
Nested actions not showing in "Next Action" Lightstorm OmniFocus for iPhone 4 2010-06-24 07:30 PM
Actions Lacking Context Not Showing Up Under "No Context" Shotster OmniFocus 1 for Mac 8 2007-12-05 10:06 AM
Scroll wheel results in "double scrolling" Ward OmniWeb Bug Reports 0 2007-08-20 03:33 PM


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 12:04 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.