Undesirable list behavior when completing actions [A: will be fixed.]

I’m in a context view that shows a number of available actions. These actions are from different projects. … This might be easier to explain with a example.

I have two projects, A and B. A consists of the actions A1, A2 and A3. B consists of the action B1. All of the actions are in the same context, let’s call it X. To start off, my context view list for X looks like:

A1
B1

A1 is selected. I complete it by pressing the space key. A1 is marked as completed and A2 appears, so the list now looks like:

A2
B1

However, the selection automatically jumped to B1 rather than going to A2. The standard behavior in OF1 in a situation like this is to keep the selection on the new action from the project I was just working on, i.e. A2. That way I can keep working on the next action in the project I was just working on. After all, there is probably some sort of logical flow in the project.

As it is now, I have to move the selection from B1 back to A2, work on A2, mark it as complete, the marker jumps to B1 again, then I have to move the marker back to A3, work on it, etc …

Am I making myself clear? Is anybody else annoyed by this change?

If it helps, our lead UX designer agrees with you and already filed a bug about this! The problem this was trying to solve was that we were losing your selection altogether (in OmniFocus 2) when the selected task faded from view, but the bandaid might be worse than the problem was.

I think it’s too late to change this behavior for the initial 2.0 release, but I expect we’ll revisit this in one of the early updates. (Though I’m afraid it’s not quite as high on the priority list as, say, viewing the Inbox and Project list as the same time in the same window.)

3 Likes

I’m glad I have somebody else on my side. I agree, the simultaneous Inbox and Project list thing has higher priority. I’m looking forward to solutions to both of these problems. :-)