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Five-Minute Workshop Videos

Posted by Bill Van Hecke on 02.07.12 | 3 Comments

Thanks to all who came out to our booth at Macworld | iWorld 2012, tried out our apps, participated in the workshops, and picked up some classy embossed iPad sleeves. We always love getting to meet people face-to-face and talk about software!

Each of the workshops this year was designed to be a quick, interactive run-through of just a few of the things you can do with one of our iPad apps. We’ve just posted videos of the workshops for anyone who didn’t get to see them on the show floor. If you want a five-minute intro to what a particular Omni product is all about, these are a pretty excellent way to get it.
Enjoy!
Wherever you go, there you are: location reminders in OmniFocus

Posted by Brian on 10.14.11 | 13 Comments

Howdy, everybody! With a new release of iOS and new iPhone hardware, there’s been a ton of excitement and news this week; fun times!

In addition to all the cool new stuff Apple’s released, we’ve been able to build a few things using their toys that we hope will also be pretty exciting; I wanted to take a few moments and tell you about one of them. Specifically, the new location-based notifications we’ve added to OmniFocus for iPhone 1.12 and OmniFocus for iPad 1.4!

One of the first things we added to OmniFocus was time-based reminders; it wasn’t too long after that that folks asked for location-based ones as well. In fact, the first request we got for location-based reminders was back in May of 2007, before we’d even shipped version 1.0 of the Mac app! Over the years, we got more requests, especially once OmniFocus for iPhone and iPad appeared - wouldn’t it be great if the device you were carrying around in your pocket could tell where you were and remind you of the things you needed to do?

The first couple versions of iOS mostly made use of location data on maps. It was useful - you could create a context for a pharmacy you used, add the address, and see a dot on the map if any actions needed doing. You had to remember to look at the map screen, though. With iOS 4, it started to look like the pieces we needed to add the feature were coming together - that version of the OS had the ability to monitor location information and notify an application when the device was in a certain area. We did some preliminary work towards implementing location reminders; the feature worked and didn’t use much battery charge, but it became apparent it wasn’t as fast or as accurate as we hoped. We decided to pause work on the feature.

We were pretty excited by some of the changes Apple made in their recent hardware, though; they found a way to improve the accuracy of location monitoring without using more power. Specifically, the iPhone 4 (and 4S) include a feature called “region monitoring”, which lets them track the devices’ location via GPS without running down the battery. iPad 2 models with 3G also have this capability. Unfortunately, devices released before then don’t have a low-power way to monitor their location as accurately, so they won’t be able to use this type of reminder in OmniFocus. (The Reminders app included in iOS 5 has the same limitation.)

Still, if you have a device that supports it, the location reminders can give you an extra nudge, helping you to complete actions you might otherwise forget. Because battery life is a top priority, though, it’s important to remember that the location is only being checked from time to time. If you pass through an area quickly (by driving past it on the highway, for example) you may not get an alert. It’s also important to note that the regions being monitored are fairly broad - the smallest “distance” setting still corresponds to about one city block, and things get more broad from there. Hopefully in the future we’ll have never-fail pinpoint-accuracy location monitoring, but we’re not quite there yet.

Since we shipped this feature, we’ve gotten questions from some customers that are seeing the “your location is being monitored” indicator more often than they used to, and it’s true that it’ll show up more often. As long as you have an available action in a context with a location attached, OmniFocus will stay subscribed to location information, activating that indicator.

The folks that are concerned by this are usually worried that their battery will be drained more quickly, and in previous versions of iOS, that would have been the case. In iOS 5, though, you shouldn’t have to worry as much. Behind the scenes, iOS 5 is handling things. We can’t know the exact details of how it works, but Apple’s stated goal was to be reasonably accurate while minimizing battery drain. The location monitoring indicator is mainly to help you manage your privacy; avoiding battery drain was a useful side-effect. But in iOS 5, the device is better able to conserve the battery.

It may also be helpful to know that OmniFocus’ map view also shows the indicator: that view determines your location more precisely than the location reminders do - you will see some battery impact there. In fact, shortly after shipping the iPhone update, we discovered that the Map view doesn’t remember to stop monitoring your location after you close the view; that actually can cause battery drain! Thanks to the folks that reported this problem - we’ll get an update out that fixes that as soon as possible.

For more details on location reminders, check the new help pages; they’re accessible from the Settings screen in each app. In the meantime, I hope this post helps you decide if location reminders will work for your purposes. Have ideas, suggestions, or concerns? We’d love to know what you think! Drop some comments here, or email our support ninjas; you’re also welcome to ask questions in our forums or on Twitter. Thanks, everyone!
OmniGraphSketcher Goes Logarithmic

Posted by Robin on 08.29.11 | 9 Comments

“Wow, your customers are nerdy!”

That was a friend’s response recently when I mentioned that logarithmic axes are the number-one feature request for OmniGraphSketcher.

The way I see it, our customers understand that logarithmic scales are the best way to present many types of data and ideas. Stock prices, advances in technology, and many other phenomena tend to change by multiples rather than additions. Logarithmic scales show each doubling as a constant distance, so you can compare percent changes without large differences in absolute size getting in the way.

So I’m very excited to announce that OmniGraphSketcher 1.2 for Mac and OmniGraphSketcher 1.5 for iPad are now available, with full support for logarithmic axes!

You don’t even need to know anything about logarithms to use this feature. You just turn it on via the axis inspector, for either or both axes. (The resulting charts are sometimes called lin-log and log-log.) There is no step two!

These logarithmic axes are designed to follow best practices in information visualization, and they work seamlessly with all the other features of the app, such as dragging, nudging, snapping, sketch recognition, axis manipulation, and scale-to-fit. And because logarithmic scales are more likely to span many orders of magnitude, we now support much larger and smaller numbers (up to 10³⁰⁰ and down to 10^-300), more decimal precision (up to 13 digits), and scientific notation (so you can use numbers like 3 x 10²⁰⁰ without typing 200 zeroes).

Given that the known sizes of physics only range from about 10^-35 meters (the Planck distance in quantum theory) up to 10²⁶ meters (the size of the observable universe), we figure that +/- 300 orders of magnitude should be plenty.

At least for now.

As part of these updates, we’ve also refined the algorithms that draw axis tick marks and tick labels. When there is not enough room to label every tick mark, we now consistently label every other tick mark, or every 5th, or every 10th, etc. If we skip a lot, we’ll automatically use major/minor tick marks to make it easier to see which tick marks are getting labeled.

On logarithmic axes, we show just the first five numbers between each power of ten when possible, then only the powers of ten themselves, and then evenly-spaced powers of ten. OmniGraphSketcher makes all of these decisions for you, so you never have to think about it.

And did I mention that your axis ranges don’t have to end on powers of ten? Suppose your data values fall between 8 and 200. In many charting programs, the best you can do is this:

But we think logarithmic axes should be just as flexible as linear ones, and we want you to be able to switch between linear and logarithmic scales seamlessly. Again, we’ve done the work so you can get what you’d expect:

Last but not least, we’ve added a really nifty new feature called line interpolation. As you know, OmniGraphSketcher lets you draw lines freehand even if you don’t have exact data to back them up. This is great if you have a rough idea of a trend or want to visualize several possible scenarios. But wouldn’t it be cool if you could also turn your sketched lines into sampled data points for analysis or re-plotting in another program? That’s exactly what line interpolation does. It samples at each horizontal tick mark (x-value) to convert your line into a data series.

The reason we’re introducing this at the same time as logarithmic axes is because it lets you see how the shape of a line differs in linear vs. logarithmic space. Regular lines in OmniGraphSketcher simply connect two or more data points as smoothly as possible, so intermediate values do not necessarily stay the same when you convert between linear and logarithmic scales. Line interpolation solves this by letting you anchor some of the intermediate points. Now you can easily demonstrate, for example, how a straight line in logarithmic space becomes an exponential curve in linear space:

Download the latest versions of OmniGraphSketcher from the App Store (Mac, iPad) or from our online store (Mac); or use the built-in software update to download automatically.

And let us know what you think!

(If you want all the details, check out the release notes for the Mac and iPad versions.)
Design Report: OmniOutliner for iPad Styles

Posted by Bill Van Hecke on 08.16.11 | 3 Comments

Hallo. The styles system in OmniOutliner for Mac is a good example of an interface that, if you take the time to master it, provides pretty bewildering amounts of power. If you don’t take the time to master it, well, it mostly does its job whilst hovering somewhere between nifty and wacky. When creating OmniOutliner for iPad, we wanted to take a fresh stab at styles, and see if we could give the same underlying system a more sensible interface.

Respecting Row Boundaries

OmniOutliner for Mac behaves like a word processor: once you turn on a style attribute, that style is in effect until you decide to turn it off:

But part of what makes an outline an outline is that rows are distinct, discrete objects. You can select them individually, shuffle them around, and keep them more organized than a simple stream of text. So on iPad, we stopped propagating styles across row boundaries:

This one small change made a big difference in how the app feels. Rather than trying to be smart and guessing what you might want for each row, we erred on the side of containment and predictability.

Emphasizing Named Styles

OmniOutliner for Mac makes it easy to set up one-time custom styles on text. Just select something and start messing with the inspectors. That’s great, except that it can pretty quickly lead to myriad slightly-different one-off styles. Maybe some of your headings are 16-point size, while others are 15. Some highlights are one shade of yellow, while others are a slightly different one. And if you ever want to change any of those styles, you’ll need to go back and edit them one by one.

The better way, of course, is named styles. Set up a style once, and then use it over and over. If you edit the style, all instances of it change too. To encourage the use of named styles on iPad, we did two things.

First, we included several document templates, each with its own suite of carefully-constructed named styles. This is in line with our observance of sensible defaults — offering good initial settings with an app is even more important than, and can often preclude the need for, customization. In other words, it’s not good enough to let people make cool stuff as long as they are willing to do the setup — they should be able to make cool stuff without any setup at all.

Second, we put the ad-hoc styling controls one panel deeper than the named styles. You need to go past the existing named styles before you can get at the fiddly stuff. Hopefully, if there is a named style that does what you want, you’ll notice it before going and doing the work yourself.

Replacing the Styles Palette, the Style Attributes Inspector, and the Style Matrix

The Mac version makes it easy to set up complex automatic style hierarchies; in fact, it’s too easy. If you want to make good use of that power, you have to get comfortable with the Styles Palette, the Style Attributes Inspector, and the Styles View matrix. Each of these appears in a different place and is used for a slightly different purpose.

For iPad, we wanted to offer 90% of the functionality people want, with about 10% of the effort. Most importantly, we wanted to stop compromising the experience of casual users in order to offer esoteric functionality to power users. As the Alan Kay quotation goes, “simple things should be simple; complex things should be possible.”

Simple things should be simple

In reality, your relationship with styles is that you almost always just want to select a row and choose a style. On the Mac, this simple action is not as simple as it could be to perform. You open the Style Palette to see which styles are available (assuming you made some). Then you drag a style from the palette to the row in your outline. Then you can select the row and open the Style Attributes inspector to see which styles are applied.

On the iPad, we made it super simple: tap a row, tap the Inspector button, and tap a style; the style gets a checkmark to show that it’s applied. This uses the select-then-modify interaction people are familiar with, and combines the list of available styles with the indication of which styles are applied.

Complex things should be possible

In OmniOutliner for Mac, you can set up very precise automatic style hierarchies (like great-great-grandchildren of this particular row should be italic and blue and get the Citation style). But this means as you grow your document, you have a geometrically-increasing number of little style chits to keep under control. The Styles palette is constantly showing you all the level styles, encouraging you to customize them. Every row in your document has a style slot for every level of descendants! But, since you don’t actually often need to use such stuff, we wanted to stop putting it in front of you all the time.

Instead, on the iPad we’ve replaced that entire system with a single “children’s style” attribute on each named style. (For instance, you can say that children of Heading 1 rows get the Heading 2 style.) You can use it to chain together styles and get the same effects as before, but the interface for it is tucked away instead of in your face, and it takes quite a few taps to set up long chains.

Yep, we actually intentionally made automatic level-based styles a bit harder to do, because it let us drastically simplify the way we represent styles. And the difficulty is not that big of a deal because we could provide sensible default documents where the chain was already set up. That way, you can customize our chain when you need one, and forget about the feature altogether when you don’t.

The complexity-to-difficulty curve

Lots of desktop software starts out hard, and gets a little harder when you want to do something really demanding. But you can do pretty much everything you could realistically want to do. iPad software, though, starts out really easy, and then more steeply increases in difficulty as you try to do more complicated stuff. Eventually you hit a point where you can’t do certain elaborate tasks at all.

Why? Because it’s actually quite rare that you want to do something that complicated! Almost everything you want to do in your day-to-day life is way to the left of the intersection of these difficulty curves. Accommodating the elaborate cases would almost certainly compromise simplicity for the normal stuff. The whole iPad experience is more than happy to sacrifice the super power-user workflow in favor of the commonest cases.

So much of software design is deciding what you want your complexity-to-difficulty curve to look like: where it begins, how it ramps up, and where it cuts off entirely. In fact, while I was composing this post, Lukas Mathis made an excellent post exploring various apps’ graphs of experience versus depth: The Growing User and the Perennial Beginner.

However you visualize it, consider: “Who is this product for? What should their first-run experience be like? What about their one-hundredth-run experience? And can we stay useful enough for them to have a one-thousandth-run experience?”
A Nudge Forward

Posted by Robin on 06.23.11 | 4 Comments

Typically before we ship a new version of OmniGraphSketcher, I like to try using the app to re-create a real economics diagram based on a set of the most interesting graphs in an economics textbook. In other words, I try to simulate the experience of being an actual OmniGraphSketcher user.

The last time I did this, I was blown away by how easy it was to draw this professional-quality graph, right there on my iPad — just by tapping and dragging my fingers.

I mean, look at that! I could easily email it in PDF format directly to a textbook publisher.

There was one frustration, though. It was difficult and somewhat error-prone to precisely position text labels, especially when they were short, abbreviated variable names. The labels were mostly hidden under my finger, so adjusting them just right required zooming in as far as I could and even then having to guess if I was in exactly the right spot.

I knew that Apple's iWork applications had solved this problem with a "nudge" gesture, which you perform by holding one finger on the object to be adjusted and then swiping a second finger in the direction you want to nudge. The object being held shifts by one pixel per swipe. That feature was already on our very long to-do list, but no customers had ever requested it, so it was not in any immediate plans. Yet assembling this example graph made it clear that finely adjusting objects was the weakest link in our quest to make graph creation as quick and easy as possible.

I set about implementing the nudge gesture, which quickly turned into a major overhaul of our whole gesture recognition system. That overhaul made the other gestures more reliable, and it paved the way for new and interesting gesture shortcuts. For example, OmniGraffle for iPad now includes the ability to quickly send objects forward and backwards by pressing one finger on the selection while swiping two more fingers up (to send forward) or down (to send backward).

Now that OmniGraphSketcher for iPad includes the nudge gesture, creating that complex economics graph is really a breeze. You'd think I'd have gotten used to it by now, given that I've been developing the app ever since the iPad was announced and I know in detail how it all works. Yet Apple's term "magical" is still the best way I know of to describe what it feels like to use the app to make beautiful, accurate graphs.
OmniOutliner for iPad sells 10,000 copies in first three weeks

Posted by Ken Case on 06.02.11 | 10 Comments

Thanks to all our customers for your amazing show of support for serious iPad productivity apps! Three weeks ago we launched OmniOutliner for iPad, and I'm very pleased to announce that we sold our 10,000th copy of the app yesterday.

More importantly, our reviews on the App Store are averaging four stars and we've been hearing great things about the app from all of you:

@stanlemon: @kcase your crew really knocked it out of the park today with @OmniOutliner for the iPad. Bravo!

@rwilcox: Omnioutliner iPad is so much more than I ever imagined. Never been so blown away.

@PaulWestlake: Used @OmniOutliner on the iPad in my first meeting today. Wow... This is going to replace so many of the apps on my iPad. Stunning. Buy it!

@JustOrtiz: OmniOutliner for iPad was the reason I wanted an iPad when it first came out. Well worth the wait. It's finally made the iPad what I need

@jdriscoll: Spent some time with OmniOutliner for iPad last night and was blown by the 1.0. Great work @omnigroup.

So with over 10,000 sales and great reviews it looks like version 1.0 is off to a great start!

But version 1.0 is just where our apps start, it's not where they end: today we're putting the final touches on a version 1.0.2 update, which fixes a number of bugs and adds a few minor enhancements, such as autoscroll for dragging rows and document sorting by title.

And we won't be stopping at version 1.0.2 either, of course. Many of you have also asked us for a better document management interface and for automatic document synchronization, so those are some of our top priorities for the next few updates. We've been inspired by the improvements Apple has made in the iWork apps earlier this week (yay, folders!), and we're also really looking forward to learning on Monday how Apple's upcoming iCloud service might fit into the picture.

…and all that said, I just got the word from QA that version 1.0.2 looks ready to go, so I'm off to go submit that now. Thanks for taking the time to read this, and thanks especially for all the great feedback over these first few weeks! Please keep it coming: we're looking forward to continuing to make this app better and better with each release. As always, you can reach me by leaving a comment here, or by sending me a message on twitter (where you'll find me at @kcase).
OmniFocus Ninja Tricks with David Sparks

Posted by Kris on 05.24.11 | 5 Comments

Good things come in threes. Stooges, Musketeers, Supremes. Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings. Columbus' Ships, Newton's Laws, Caesar's Motto. The list (the one I'm keeping in OmniOutliner for iPad) goes on and on... and the Rule of Three once again proves true for David Sparks' 3-part series of OmniFocus Ninja Tricks from his Mac Power Users Podcast.

In each of the three screencasts David guides you through some essential workflow steps to make the most of OmniFocus. Episode 1 covers the various ways to capture your tasks, Episode 2 delves into the planning process and in Episode 3, he explains the best ways to take action and review. As an attorney, author, and all-around man of many hats, it's pretty safe to say that David is a paragon of productivity. We're delighted to share his trilogy of tricks with you.
OmniFocus for iPad v1.3 has been approved!

Posted by Ken Case on 05.17.11 | 21 Comments
OmniFocus for iPad v1.3 updates Forecast Mode: Never spread yourself too thin. Enable Calendar integration to see your hard landscape events alongside your overdue and due soon OmniFocus actions. Use the View options menu to show your items with a start date. Reschedule your projects and actions—with just a tap or two—to keep your days balanced.

This update also includes full screen note viewing and editing, improved support for screen mirroring, and a number of other user interface and workflow improvements.

[NOTE: If you're reading this within a few hours of approval, your local App Store might not have the update yet. If that happens, just wait an hour or so and then try again: it will be there soon!]

We love hearing from you! You can reach us by tapping Contact Omni (in the Gear Menu above the sidebar), sending email to omnifocus-ipad@omnigroup.com, tweeting to@omnifocus, or calling 1-800-315-OMNI or +1 206-523-4152.

Forecast
- Forecast mode now integrates calendar events into a convenient timeline. Use the View options menu to configure which calendars appear on the timeline, and the range of hours for which events are displayed. (This feature requires iOS 4.0 or later.)
- Forecast mode now includes an additional section for viewing items starting on the days of the upcoming week. Use the View options menu to hide or show this section.
- Tapping “View” on a Due Reminder alert now takes you to the Forecast screen, showing you all items which have become overdue at once.
Editing
- The Note section of the Editor now includes an expand button. Tap on the expand button to view or edit your notes full screen.
- When searching in the Project and Context pickers, Smart Match terms are underlined in the search results.
- When assigning a Project or Context to an Action, search results are now presented in Library order rather than alphabetically.
Workflow
- The application’s badge counts the union of overdue, due soon, and flagged items. Items that are both flagged and overdue or due soon are no longer counted twice.
- Folders’ remaining count incorrectly included Single-Action Lists.
- Dropped Contexts are only visible in the Context move popover when the current View options are set to All.
- Dropped Folders are only visible in the Project move popover when the current View options are set to All.
- Errors from automatic sync sessions no longer interrupt you with an alert. Instead, the Sync button is badged. Tapping the Sync button will display the error alert and offer to retry the sync.
User Interface
- OmniFocus takes advantage of hardware screen mirroring when available.
- When mirroring your iPad 2 on a secondary display, OmniFocus now shows your gestures—taps, pinches, swipes, and all—so that your viewers can follow along.
- Untitled items are now correctly represented in Project, Action, and Context lists.
- Fixed a bug that could cause incorrect sorting of a Perspective’s actions when grouped by a date.
Inbox
- The Inbox badge count no longer includes completed items.
- Items blocked by a future start date are once again excluded from the Inbox badge count.
- Paste and New Action are now available from the contextual menu for the Inbox header.
- Fixed a bug which prevented you from moving an item to the top of the Inbox.
Review
- Projects within the Review sidebar are sorted in Library order.
- Fixed a bug where launching OmniFocus into Review mode with the Inbox selected incorrectly resulted in an empty list of projects needing review.
- When there are no remaining Projects requiring review, the plus button no longer gives multiple choices for creating an Inbox item.
Stability
- Fixed a crash which could occur when entering the background and using Bonjour syncing.
- Fixed a rare problem which could lead to a crash if OmniFocus received a memory warning while in landscape orientation.
- Fixed a regression where Email Debug Info (to the OmniFocus support ninjas) was inappropriately using the in-app mail client.
OmniOutliner for iPad is now available!

Posted by Ken Case on 05.12.11 | 51 Comments

I'm very pleased to announce that OmniOutliner for iPad is now available on the App Store for $19.99!

We've posted screenshots and a video tutorial on our OmniOutliner for iPad pages, and here's the official press release:

The Omni Group Brings OmniOutliner to the iPad

OmniOutliner for iPad Enables Users to Efficiently Create, Collect and Organize Information on the Popular Tablet

SEATTLE – May 12, 2011 – The Omni Group, a developer of productivity applications for Mac and iOS, today announced that OmniOutliner is now available on the iPad. The iPad edition of the company’s popular note-taking and outlining program offers users the ability to create, collect and organize information in a multitude of ways including creating to-do lists and agendas, managing tasks and expenses, taking notes and planning events. OmniOutliner for iPad is available for purchase on the App Store.

Industry analysts forecast that 52 million tablets are estimated to be shipped in 2011, with the iPad comprising 75 percent of these shipments. While iPad and other tablets have been traditionally used for consuming content on the web, watching videos, reading e-books and listening to music, selecting the right tools and apps can easily optimize the iPad for use as a mobile computing platform for business.

"The moment we learned about the iPad we knew it marked a shift in the direction of personal computing devices," said Ken Case, CEO and founder of the Omni Group. "Each time we bring a productivity app to the iPad we redesign it from the ground up to take advantage of this new platform, and OmniOutliner for iPad is no exception. Our team has done an amazing job of making the app easier to use than ever, without sacrificing the app's power. OmniOutliner is the app I turn to whenever I want to collect and structure my thoughts, and it's great to be able to take my outlines with me and work with them wherever I am."

OmniOutliner for iPad includes the powerful features specifically designed to help iPad users get the job done simply and easily:

Rich Text Styling– Fully customizable text styling options provide users with the same functionality as expected from a word processor with a simplified style system that’s already available in OmniOutliner 3.

Simple Outline Restructuring– OmniOutliner for iPad affords users the ability to easily rearrange and drag rows individually. Additionally, users can mark multiple rows to either group or move them at the same time.

Multiple Column Formats– In addition to text, OmniOutliner for iPad provides column options for numbers, duration, pop-up lists, and date types, many of which include their own specific data formatting options.

Inline Image Support– OmniOutliner for iPad allows users to paste images directly into their documents, which will be displayed inline.

Improved Document Sharing– With OmniOutliner for iPad, files can be emailed or uploaded to users’ MobileMe accounts or any other WebDAV servers. Files may also be transferred with iTunes, and can be sent in HTML, plain text, or OPML using the above methods.

Compatible with OmniOutliner 3– OmniOutliner for iPad is completely compatible and interchangeable with files generated in OmniOutliner 3.

Ability to Import OPML Files– OmniOutliner for iPad allows users to import OPML files, a common format used by basic outlining applications, directly into the application.

OmniOutliner for iPad is more than just an outlining tool, offering multiple columns, smart checkboxes, customizable popup lists, and an innovative styles system within a few easy clicks. The app’s document structure is effective for brainstorming new ideas, drilling out project specifics, and lining up the steps needed to get everything done.

OmniOutliner for iPad is available for $19.99 on the App Store at www.itunes.com. More information about OmniOutliner for iPad is available at www.omnigroup.com/omnioutliner-ipad/.

###

About the Omni Group

One of the first companies to develop software for the Mac OS X platform, the Omni Group is a leading developer for Apple products and has designed several productivity applications for Mac OS X, iPhone, and now iPad. Founded in 1993, the Omni Group is located in Seattle.

We hope you enjoy our latest app!
OmniOutliner for iPad: First Screenshots!

Posted by Ken Case on 05.09.11 | 56 Comments

When I announced last week that OmniOutliner for iPad had been submitted to the App Store, I noted that we were still busy putting together our marketing materials which explain what the app does in more detail. Well, we just finalized our App Store description and screenshots, so I'd like to share those with you now:

OmniOutliner starts as a blank page. But as you collect, compose, and rearrange text, its powerful outlining features emerge to organize your ideas. Hierarchy, columns, styling, notes — use them all in concert or keep things simple, depending on the project at hand. From basic lists and tables to serious writing and data wrangling, OmniOutliner understands how to keep your work structured and tidy.

Why choose OmniOutliner for iPad?

COMFORT: OmniOutliner was designed with speed and ease in mind, especially for data entry. Carefully-planned keyboard interactions and the ever-present Edit bar make it straightforward to add and rearrange items. Your ideas are what’s important — OmniOutliner just helps you get them in order.

STRUCTURE: Expand and collapse groups to concentrate on what’s important now. Use the flyout Plus buttons to put new items right where you need them. And of course, just drag items around when you need to rearrange the order. If you need to make a bigger change, use Edit mode to move or modify a bunch of rows at once.

COLUMNS: Checkboxes, formatted numbers, pop-up lists, dates… Keep track of any number of different fields in each row. If you have too many columns to see at once, you can hide some. Or just temporarily slide them underneath the main outline column to get at the ones you’re interested in. You can even sort your rows by any column, then restore their original order.

STYLES: Thanks to the included sample documents and styles, you may never need to adjust anything yourself. But if you want to, check out our custom rich-text editor, with more detailed styling than you’re likely to find anywhere else on iPad. Save your favorites as named styles, for quick and consistent styling across your document. Even chain styles together to automatically change rows based on their position in the hierarchy.

NOTES: Inline notes make it easy to keep track of ideas for future revisions, ancillary content, reviewers’ comments, ill-considered notions, snide jokes, and other miscellaneous info. You can attach notes to any row in a document, and show or hide them individually or en masse. And of course, notes can be styled just as precisely as the main content.

LINKS & ATTACHMENTS: Web addresses you type automatically get linkified. And any image you can copy and paste, from tiny embellishments to sketches from a drawing app to full-sized photos, can be placed right in your outline.

SHARING: OmniOutliner has no shortage of ways to share your documents. Import and export via iDisk, WebDAV, or email, in several formats: OmniOutliner (compatible with OmniOutliner 3 for Mac), OPML (compatible with other outlining applications), HTML, or good old-fashioned plain text. You can even choose a dynamic HTML export with expandable and collapsible groups.

SUPPORT: If you have any feedback or questions, we'd love to hear from you! The Omni Group offers free tech support: you can reach us by email at omnioutliner@omnigroup.com, by phone at 1-800-315-6664 or +1-206-523-4152, or on twitter at @omnioutliner.

Thank you!

And now, the screenshots!

Sadly, the App Store only allows for five screenshots. Fortunately, our blog has no such limitation, so here are a few more!

Again, we don't know exactly how long it will take for OmniOutliner to be reviewed, but hopefully it won't take too much longer. Once it has been approved, we'll post a specific launch date and time—so if you haven't seen anything here yet, there's no need to keep checking the App Store. In fact, if you'd like to be notified by email the moment OmniOutliner is available on the App Store, you can subscribe to our low-traffic OmniNews mailing list or to our OmniOutliner Users mailing list. Or you can follow @omnigroup or @omnioutliner on twitter.

As always, I'd welcome any feedback you might have: leave a comment here, or send me a message on twitter (where you'll find me at @kcase). Thanks for taking the time to read this!