Really? I didn’t know that either of those handled nested actions. Is it just for one level, or can you go deeper? I am working on two very complex projects in parallel right now and OF’s terrible support of those on mobile devices is causing me a truly ridiculous amount of unnecessary stress.
Things and Todoist both provide just one level of sub-tasks, which is far more limiting than the nesting of actions to any number of levels in OF.
I’m not sure if being limited to one level of subtasks is more or less limiting than OF’s terrible navigation and display implementation for nested tasks and project folders on the iPad and iPhone. I was just doing a review of some several-year-old tasks and realized that it’s been over two years since I started converting my Work/Client/Project/Milestone folder organization to a flat one because navigation is so badly broken on the iPad.
It’s a good illustration of trade-offs in product design. Those apps’ fixed data structure make it simpler to design the UI (and ‘everything is in its place’), but users have to shoehorn their information into that. In contrast, the flexible levels of folders, actions, and tags in OF provide much better support for representing your information in the way you think about it, but it places more demands on the UI.
In the absence of an all-singing, all-dancing expand/collapse view in OF3, I think the right choice was made to adopt the indented view of actions on iPhone, instead of the OF2 approach which required you to tap into and out of each level of actions. I’m sure the upcoming UI redesign of the OF apps will support everyone’s diverse workflows even better.
The iOS redesign we’re currently building has an outline which works just like the Mac and web apps: you can see your full indented outline, and expand or collapse an item at any level to show or hide its children. (It also supports in-place editing of item titles, notes, tags, etc., rather than sending you off to the inspector for those edits.)
We still have plenty of work to do before this is ready to ship, but I’m really enjoying the progress we’ve made so far and can’t wait to share the results with you all once this work is finished.
6 Likes
This is great news! Hope to see it soon.
I don’t really like the Inspector - partly because it wastes screen real estate. And I would hope the rebuilt app would allow for Omnijs actions against individual or selected tasks - perhaps as a context menu.
Example: Move due date of selected tasks out by 2 weeks. (A real example for me - which I did yesterday - and one where the Inspector options don’t cut it. I also have 4-week bumps for different things, not 1-month.)
Looking forward to the beta.
Yes, by all means… pretty please bring back the ability to collapse action items. I don’t mind if they’re expanded by default, I just want the ability to collapse all the little, individual steps to an action, so I can actually look at all the actions.
This seems to me to be a very rudimentary and fundamental part of planning one’s day. I don’t want to be afraid to map out an action that has a lot of small steps, just because I don’t want to be forced to scroll past all of them, later. One little expand/collapse arrow on the site and it should serve everyone equally well like that. There’s no logical reason for anyone to object to it. If they do, then why not put something in the settings that allows you to toggle it on or off?
You can hold your finger down on the disclosure triangle to open a contextual menu that allows you to expand or collapse all.
Who else read the new Omni roadmap post and laughed aloud? Apparently, there is an iOS redesign in the works which will fix the iOS and iPadOS usability issues, but we’re going to get to pay for a whole new version in order to get it.
1 Like
Did it say it was a paid upgrade?
Kcase said that the new interface can be found in Testflight versions of OmniFocus 4. Maybe this will be the first major version change of OF that doesn’t require people to purchase a new license, but I doubt it.
Oh, I didn’t see that part… well… OF 4 sounds exciting! I wonder what else we will get…
They typically have upgrade pricing which will be roughly 50% off. There is also a time window for a free upgrade if you bought within something like 3-6 months of the introduction of the new version.
I wonder how so we can expect OF 4. Very intrigued.
It says OmniPlan 4, that’s a different product!
1 Like
Too much time listening to podcasts, not enough reading lately. This is what happens when I do all my learning by listening to things like Nested Folders instead of sensibly reading things online. My reading comprehension has apparently gone to pot.
1 Like
Oh, the old “it’s a different product ploy”, eh? 🤪
As if actual facts are relevant on t’internet
