I’m referring to the Style Preferences setting:
“Use color for Due Soon, Overdue, and First Available items”
First of all, it of course doesn’t only colour the mentioned three, but also every single action in a Single Action List, as well as every available single action without a project, as it should.
However, it colours only the First Available action in a Parallel Project.
I don’t see the point of this contradicting behaviour.
Why can’t we have all available actions coloured?
Especially in custom perspectives and tag views, the existing behaviour gives the illusion that some colourless actions are not available, simply due to their arbitrary placement in a parallel project.
Using the ‘OmniFocus Dark’ theme, next actions are a bright (77%) purple and other available actions are a less bright (65%) grey, against a near black background: there’s more contrast between the purple and the background than between the grey and the background, so the next actions stand out more, as they should…
Using the 'OmniFocus" theme, next actions are a brighter (84%) purple and other available actions are total (0%) black, against a bright white background; there’s more contrast between the black and the background than between the purple and the background, so the next actions stand out less, de-emphasising them.
Honestly, did none of the designers and beta-testers use anything but the supposedly “rad” (sigh) Dark theme?
I teach my students to think twice before beginning any statement with “of course”: it suggests a lack of critical thinking.
Given that the opposition to the low-density display in OF2 took Omni by surprise, and that they also failed to anticipate opposition to the dark sidebar in OF3, I don’t think it’s “silly” to ask how much testing there was of the impact of a single checkbox in Preferences on the usability what was clearly not the designers’ and testers’ preferred theme. As I noted, the option works well in the Dark theme.
There’s a difference between disagreeing with design choices and highlighting poor design. I wish next actions were coloured blue, but they’re purple: that’s a design choice. If and until user-generated theming is returned, I could live with it.
But a colour scheme which emphasises the lower priority items is poor design. It’s one of the many reasons I’m sticking with OF2 for now.
I’ve noticed that “please email in your feedback” seems to have become a way of shutting down discussions on this forum. It’s possible to have sent individual feedback and then to raise the issue on this forum to highlight the difficulty for others. I’ve certainly benefitted from other users noting problems I’d yet to encounter, but which would have affected me given time.
