Are custom fonts/colors/styling in the outline view supported? [Supported in v2.5]

In OF1 Preferences, the style tab allows one to set custom font, sizes, colors, backgrounds, etc. for everything. I can’t find any way to do this in OF2, so I’m stuck with all the default styles. Am I missing something, or is this just not yet included in the Beta?

The big question is - will font size and stye option be included at all?

1 Like

There is the font size slider in Preferences > General, which adjusts the size of titles in the main outline.
We do not plan to offer any additional style customization in 2.0, but are collecting all these requests for future consideration.

“We do not plan to offer any additional style customization in 2.0”

Seriously? That makes 2.0 FAR less usable for me.

3 Likes

Yes, seriously.

I understand that styles may keep you and other participants of this thread from adopting OmniFocus 2 right away. But many people have told us they already find OmniFocus 2 far more useful than OmniFocus 1. We could ask those folks to wait while we add styles. Or we could ship something useful to them, and then continue to add features to make the app even more powerful, and valuable to even more people.

When we are ready to add styles back, we’ll need to understand what styling options are important to folks. So, which OmniFocus 1 style customization options do you find most useful? What additional styling options do you wish it had?

I use styles to visually differentiate many different elements to make it easier to see and use. For instance, flagged items are one color, items due within a certain frame another, overdue items another, etc. I also find it’s very helpful to have different font sizes for headings, items and notes.

This has been important to me not just for print-outs (in fact, printouts without the ability to create custom styles, is a bust), but also for on-screen. Not so much on iOS devices (although it’s nice there), but mainly for my desktop monitor. Since I have a large OF file with lots of items, it helps certain items “pop out” visually from the lengthy list.

4 Likes

Thank you for clarifying this. I can now finally make a decision and stick with TaskPaper.

I find it too uncomfortable to read small font on my Macbook Air 13. Although it is helpful to increase the size of the Task items, having tiny Project and Context items is not acceptable to me.

In the main outline, the project and context size should be adjusting along with the tasks. Do you mean in the sidebar?

Yes, the sidebar looks tiny when the font size is made larger. It makes logical sense that if you change the font size in the entire app, the sidebar will be adjusted appropriately.

Another problem is that the next font size from the default font size is somewhat too big. Something in-between would have been much better.

Status-based styles

2 Likes

Most useful outliner style options for me:
Font selection (I find proximal a great web font but I prefer a font constant with the Mac OS for desktop)
Independent styling for Headings, items and item groups: font sizing and weight would do.
Status styles as timjbuck mentioned above.
Background colour for projects/contexts (currently grey).

I’d be very happy with that.

2 Likes

I may be reading too much into this, but this (and the fact that there are no status-based styles in OF2 at all) seems to suggest that the team doesn’t already have a sense of how and why styles are valuable to OF users. Which worries me if true.

I would expect that the team would already have a solid understanding of how and why styles are important, and merely need time to implement them, but it sounds like the concept and value of styles is being reconsidered.

Would you mind clearing things up/setting me straight?

I see that in the 207312 version of the beta, you have fixed the Font Size where the next level of font size is increased somewhat instead of in the previous version it would become huge!

I like this improvement. Thank you.

However, increasing the font size must also increase the font size of the sidebar font. Otherwise, it looks uncomfortable - too much of a contrast between small and medium font size.

Style customization was added to OmniFocus 1 in 2006, before anyone outside Omni had used the app. So, no, we don’t have piles of emails from customers saying “I really need custom styles because…” And what we see on the internet is mostly people tweaking the styles in relatively extreme ways (like making OmniFocus 1 for Mac look like OmniFocus 2 for iPhone). The people who have been happily using a gently tuned set of customized styles for the last 5 years generally aren’t telling us about it in great detail.
While we have a pretty good idea of what style customizations are important, this seemed like an opportunity to check our assumptions before we spend time re-implementing them. If people wanted styles primarily so that they could make note text black, they’d be disappointed if what we implemented was the option to color action and project titles based on statuses like due date (or vice versa).

I never applied any style to OF1 for years and when I did I spent ages playing with them until I arrived at what I have now. I didn’t find that switching between them made using the system any easier, its was just aesthetics. Not having the ability to tinker endlessly for me is welcome. For me, I add. However …

the ‘one’ thing that was present in pretty much every theme was the use of a style to indicate functional meaning in the hierarchy such as grouped, blocked, next action and so on. I miss this aspect of OF1 as the current information obtained from the layout itself seems to only be:

Nesting level
Presence or absence of a note

I think that’s it. This seems a step back to me, especially that as the filter bar has gone it’s not possible to know what you are looking at when viewing a layout when all you have is pale grey for every project/action item.

I really don’t understand the logic behind the design. Font size in settings should control font size in the entire application and not just the Tasks font size.

Global font size settings should also affect the sidebar.

No matter how great OmniFocus is, I refuse to hurt my eyes while using it.

1 Like

I am one of the Silent Stylers of OF1.

I increased the font sizes and contrast so everything was easier to read. [Helv. Neue Light rocks!] I also experimented with making the background lightly transparent; it actually helped with readability. I went through a few months of “I’m a UI/UX designer, (I am) watch me play” then settled down to a basic style that worked.

I love the functionality of OmniFu2, but am finding it hard to read small medium gray text on a light gray background.

I’m be happy with directions for adding a style sheet to the package, or having the controls only in Pro — but I know I won’t use OF2 enough if I can’t make the fonts more legibile.

1 Like

OmniFocus is not using a special font for these characters. It should just be using the system default. Are you seeing worse readability in OmniFocus than in other places where you just use the system font? (Screenshots are especially helpful.)

Hi - I cannot see how to change the colors of text or backgrounds. I hope you are not going the way of MS365 with their grey, white and washed out blue and well hidden buttons!

I am enjoying the increased usability of OF2 but not its visibility. I use theming on OF1 that is a variant of the fantastic Bebasneue theme. It’s not just for noticing variations between what is a next action or due or overdue; it’s also for contrast and visibility purposes. As I get older, I’m having increased difficulty with contrast settings, especially on non-Retina screens. Apple’s “accessibility” controls just don’t cut it for people like me.

In OF2, I’m having more problems reading grey on grey text, deciphering the calendars in Forecast mode and quickly navigating the Projects list. I could fix that with theming. OF2 is definitely better on my Retina MacBook but my office desktop monitor is a 1080P Samsung something running on a Mac Mini and it looks way worse on that. I’ve tuned and tweaked monitor settings but that’s not going to fix grey on grey.

I’m heartened to read that theming is planned for a later release. I hope it’s in 2.1. OF2 is something I want to use all the time but, for now, I’ll be reverting to my custom OF1 setup when I’m spending lots of time inside OF.

2 Likes