I will send this feature request by e-mail as well, but I wanted to post it here to see what others thought.
Although I like most of the directions that the UI changes are going in OF2, I don’t like the changes for displaying and controlling whether a project or action group is parallel/sequential.
In OF1, there was a subtle icon for both projects and action groups that both showed whether it was sequential or parallel and also could be clicked to toggle between the two. I found this very useful, and would often switch back and forth as I was restructuring multi-step projects/groups depending on the nature of the specific tasks involved.
In OF2, the sequential/parallel nature of projects is given tremendous emphasis, getting a large icon to the left of the project title. That icon is not actionable, however – changing the project’s setting can only be done through the inspector. In contrast, action groups now don’t have any indication of whether they are parallel or sequential – that information can only be seen in the inspector.
I think these changes are for the worse. For one, although the parallel/sequential nature of an project is important to see how actions will be made available, they are not so important that they need a giant icon to the left of the project name. For me, a project is not fundamentally parallel or sequential – that is just a setting that we apply to model how the remaining tasks should interact with one another. A project may start parallel, but then it may end up that all of the remaining tasks could be performed in any order, in which case I will switch it to be sequential. This is a useful control setting, but not a fundamental attribute by which we need to identify projects.
At the same time, I find it very useful in OF 1 to have some place in the main outline view to see whether a project or action group is parallel or sequential and to be able to toggle between the two. In OF2, you can certainly see it for projects, but you can’t change it. And for action groups, the user is completely in the dark unless he or she has the inspector open.
I would recommend getting rid of the large, black parallel/sequential icon to the left of the project title (and either having no icon, just text, or having a black/white version of OF1’s project icon), and replacing it with a smaller, subtler, actionable icon to the right of the name that lets the user see and control whether it is parallel or sequential. Then I would also recommend using that same smaller, subtler icon for action groups.