A rather pointless thrust in terms of argumentation.
Just because it’s there and decided certainly does not mean that it is perfect.
“Pointless thrust?” Did I use that phrase? Seems I did.
No this one is not a pointless thrust.
Its a simple reality that one has the option to stay with OF1.
There are issues to address in any change, but not everyone is tremendously adult about it.
"Change something, just not this” seems as though the tack that a few people are taking & stamping a foot.
Purely an observation & a little non-sequitur:
My statement was to 2 self-identified IT commenters. IT Guys are notoriously cranky & resistant to change (especially on the Windows side, from my observance. Maybe its because they don’t have OmniFocus). Many IT people don’t seem to like users very much, or requests which deviate from a set of rules that make the IT guy’s life effortless. My comment was a poke to get them to lighten up here.
The developers are being very cooperative in trying to meld this into the most useful product.
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Space, the Final Frontier
Full screen mode can be OK, here & there - and I agree with your choices listed, Wilson.
On a desktop, the smaller OF window lends itself to opening the inspector, if there’s a need.
I can’t imagine how its handled on a tablet. Phones - I don’t so much care, I use them for phone calls, not massive work.
The idea that there is breathing room in the app, makes it a stress reducer.
At least until too much of my topic falls off the screen & requires a scroll.
For me, the same rationale applies in that OF is nearly a “pop-up” itself.
The Quick Entry is precisely that: a post-it to jot to, available for later refinement.
Maybe it’s because I’m approaching 50 and wear progressive lenses. Or maybe it’s just that the lines are not differentiated in color like an alternating color spreadsheet. Either way, I’m constantly having to scan from left to right to make sure I check off the right item. I breathe a sigh of relief when I’m checking off a flagged item because it stands out enough from other rows to know I’m hitting the right one. I’ve hit the wrong one at least once.
I like the design of the circles. I would like them even more if I could visually locate them quickly and reliably.
Have you tried the “compact mode”, which improves data density and moves the circles to the left? It’s still not perfect, but for me it’s a LOT better.
How do you switch to Compact mode in Mac OF 2? Nothing in the help about it and I don’t see any options that sound like that in the menus or preferences.
Enter this URL in Safari:
omnifocus:///change-preference?ContentLayout=compact
… and then restart the app.
To go back, enter: omnifocus:///change-preference?ContentLayout
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That works quite nice. Thank you. I do wish that the task/action icons were a little larger in this view. But they are on the left now!
Edited - the only problem with the compact view is that you cannot check the ‘checkboxes’ any more. You actually have to close each item using the inspector. Ugh.
don’t worry. Omni did say that they considered this experimental. They’re still toying with how to make it work. They didn’t ant to delay the release of OF2 so they put this in to give an idea of what they were working on. It takes time to bake a cake. I think this seemed to generate a very positive response. Now it is a matter of fine-tuning it. I think they’re following Apple’s standard M.O. They’re not the first to do it. but they’ll eventually find something that works.
We can see the WWDC 2014 video. Apple was late to the table with widgets in iOS. Meanwhile, Android had widgets for a long time. But Apple’s version of widgets seems more streamlined.
I know I barely use the dashboard and found it utterly useless with the widgets located there. But having widgets in the Notification screen in Mac OS X Yosemite sounds a lot better.
If anyone has any brainstorming ideas of how to execute a better layout, I’m sure we’d all love to see a screenshot or something. Sometimes things aren’t always as easy as it appears to be. There’s so much thought that needs to be put it into something to make it work.
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We’ve started off a thread here, if you’re interested, about widgets and OmniFocus 2 for iOS and OS X.
https://discourse-test.omnigroup.com/t/omnifocus-2-for-iphone-notification-centre-widget/4681
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Whoa, I wasn’t expecting to see an interim solution so quickly. Thank you, @omnigroup, for the option. It’s looking very nice. A few things (from v2.0.3 (v87.15 r219260)):
- Checkboxes are quite small (see screenshot). I think that this is almost too compact; if the compact layout is 1 and the normal layout is 2, I think the right amount would be about 1.25. Maybe it should follow the Text Size preference.
- In response to @tlharpster, it seems like the checkboxes are now working properly, and so is the (comically small) Flag button.
- This makes it so much easier to organize and manage tasks, especially planning ahead in the Forecast view.
yeah, the limitations are well-documented… we’re all curious with what the Omnicians are coming up next ;-)
I recently upgraded to OF2 and have been struggling with the checkboxes on the right (Retinal Macbook Pro 15" at “More Space” setting). Thanks for posting this, I like the compact view much better.
I had asked Omni about the checkboxes on the right when OF came out for iPad and they said it made sense for the iPad because you’ll usually have a thumb nearby to touch them, so I was a little surprised to see it on the desktop client as well. My mouse is rarely near that side of a list view. Glad to see there’s an easy way to switch it.
I also logged in just because I opened OmniFocus after some time and noticed I suddenly had major difficulty mentally aligning the checkbox with the task on a wide screen. I wasn’t sure if it was just in my head or if something had changed.
For example on a 23" Cinema:
I was thinking a simple solution would be at least that the mouse, when hovering over a row, would apply some basic highlighting/tint so the entire row is clear like so:
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