Apologies for my critical nature here – I’m an ardent fan of OmniGroup and their products (OmniOutliner 4 is top notch) but there’s quite a lot that they could improve on this front. I’ve just downloaded and tried the new semi-private beta of OmniFocus 2.
Love the three/four pane design. Love the integrated inspector (similar to Pages 5). Love the minimalist design. The responsiveness as well – it’s a far cry from the old beta. It’s all great. What I hate though (I think I’ve read a topic on the official OmniGroup forums talking about this issue) is the data density. Data density here is terrible.
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Yes, there’s the ‘change text size’ slider, but that doesn’t affect the density of the data (the width between each task). The new design’s very pleasing on the eye, but in terms of usability, it’s hit rock bottom.
I tend to use quite a lot of nesting (3-4-5 ‘layers’ of indentation) due to the complexity and nature of my work. It just doesn’t really work well for me in OmniFocus 2.
I’d have to scroll down to see content that would normally fit on a single screen in OmniFocus 1. I propose (think it was suggested on the forum thread) the option (the default setting would be as it is right now) to increase the data density. We can look towards Gmail for inspiration – Data Density, in my mind, is the symptom.
The issue, I believe, is the lack of style features (themes) in OF2. Having the capability to change line depth, indentation, colours, font, etc - along with a newer idea of ‘data locations’ (?), whereby we can pick where each data element lives on each row; so we can move context to underneath dates, or due date to middle of row, etc, etc - would make the view better. PS: I spent past few weeks trying different task systems, and came back to OF1, to change its theme, only yesterday. It made a big difference in my renewed interest in OFfor the 3 hours before the new beta release:smile. Seeing as how so many of the Omni apps (including OF1) offer the ability to customize the theme, I am curious as to if this could be a possibility with OF2? In addition to being able to customize theme colors and fonts (a feature I use in OF1 to make the appearance less distracting), I was curious if any theming in OF2 could also allow:. Scaling up and down the size of the “check circles” (I would like to improve the “data density” (to borrow someone else’s phrase) and place more items on the screen.
Allow me to move the check off to the left hand side instead of right? Something about the check off being on the right hand side messes around with my expectations. In Forecast view, what about an option to place Calendar Events (for a selected date) under the calendar?
Seems like an awful lot of wasted space there, and moving the events there would allow me to see more items in my to do list. It seems like the reason for the way-too-wide Projects column is so that it fits the month-view calendar when you switch to the Forecast tab. I understand the desire for visual continuity when switching tabs, but creating wasted space in every tab except the Forecast tab seems like a poor solution. Maybe let us pick a more reasonable width for the Projects column and just (tastefully) animate the column sliding out to make room for the calendar when we select the Forecast tab?
Styling Is Here In Omnifocus 2.5 For Mac
I also completely agree with the whole “checkboxes on the left” comment brought up by JuanCab.