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Quick Entry Panel – Getting to Context Area Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Ok, I'm sure this might sound like a stupid question, but it's bugging the crap out of me.

I'm in the process of learning OmniFocus – watching screencasts, reading Creating Flow, etc. – and something about the Quick Entry panel is stumping me. Everywhere else, it looks like when you command-return to create a new project in the panel, you're able to either tab or right-arrow over to the context area.

On my machine though, what instead happens upon command-return is that the new task row gets highlighted and neither tab nor right-arrow does anything. I either have to shift-tab, tab three times, or manually click in the context area to make it active. Kind of annoying, right?

What the heck am I missing?
 
First off, welcome to the forums!

Hmmm... I'm getting consistent behavior, but it's the behavior you don't want. Command-return puts you in row selection mode; it doesn't leave the text cursor active in the Project cell. (This is on a 10.6 machine with my normal prefs set aside, so the app starts up with all the from-factory default settings.)

If you can figure out under what circumstances you're getting the behavior you prefer, emailing steps to the support ninjas and filing a feature request would be a great idea. Can't guarantee we'll adopt that as the default behavior, but we'll certainly give the request consideration. Thanks!
 
No, that's what it does, it isn't just you. It may just be that most people aren't actually creating projects that way(*), and thus haven't gotten annoyed enough to send enough bug reports that this has gotten to the top of the "fix-it" pile. Also, this isn't just a quick entry problem — the behavior happens in the Inbox as well. I agree that it is needlessly inefficient, and if you want to send in a bug report/feature suggestion, use Help->Send Feedback to get it into the development database.

While you certainly can create projects there, the goal is to help you get thoughts captured immediately before they are lost, and processing them into projects while capturing may run at cross purposes to that. I like to do my project creation in the Inbox, often assembling a number of items that have gotten there via clipping or quick entry. I can more easily check to make sure I'm not duplicating an existing project, look at existing start and due dates for scheduling, etc.

(*)Other methods for creating projects include outdenting actions or groups from the Inbox or other projects, dragging actions or groups to the sidebar, using the Add Project toolbar button (not in the default set, but easily added), clicking the "+" button at the bottom of the sidebar, using the contextual menu in the sidebar (control-or-right-click), New Project from the gear menu at the bottom of the sidebar, and File->Add Project. There may even be a few others :-)
 
Brian, can you give any sort of a cogent reason why one can type in values tabbing along as you go all the way across the row, except if you should happen to create a new project or context while doing so, in which case you need to tab a bunch of extra times? That makes about as much sense to me as requiring you to tab a bunch of extra times if one of the dates happens to fall on a Saturday...this behavior strikes me as something either accidental, or caused by some underlying restriction rather than something one would propose as a desirable part of the user experience :-)

Last edited by whpalmer4; 2011-04-29 at 12:30 PM..
 
Heh, my previous response wasn't intended to read as "I think it's better the way it currently is", but I can see how it might have. :-)

I'm not sure why it does that; may be a behavior we chose, might be one we just inherited from the frameworks or coded up and no one noticed/reported the issue until now.

Either way, I can't get the behavior he does want, but he does at least part of the time; having repro steps may help us figure this out. :-)
 
I should be more clear – this behavior is consistent in that it never works like I would think it works. :)

If you want to see an example of this working like I think it should, fast forward to the 21:30 mark of this demo from Merlin Mann. While I can't see the keys he's hitting, it looks like he's able to create a new project with command-return and tab over to context.

http://vimeo.com/19811530
 
Okay, I spent some time looking at this, and five minutes after mentioning it to one of our QA folks, she confirmed that it was something we broke in the 1.9 release; looks like Merlin was using an earlier build when the video was shot.

She smart. Fired up old build, saw it do something different. Me usually do that, but me not smart today. No cookie for me. :-)

Bug filed, in any case. Thanks guys!
 
Nice - that's good news Brian. I came to the forum looking up this very issue which did appear to be a regression. I was an early beta user and my fingers are trained to work a certain way on quick entry, and I was growing more and more frustrated as I would overwrite the task name thinking I was in the context box. Fortunately Command-Z helps out in that situation.
 
 


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