The Omni Group

Very cool news! OmniFocus for iPhone received Editor's Choice Awards from both The Mac Observer and iPhone Alley today.

Well, very cool for us, anyway. I mean, we totally got placards and everything.

Also, behold the magnetic crowd-draw of Mr. Merlin Mann, whose presentation-fu knows no equal:

I'm not even sure it matters what Merlin's talking about in this photo, because clearly he's got everyone gripped in some sort of productivity tractor beam, but I think he was maybe describing the coolness of OmniFocus. The award-winning OmniFocus, that is.

At noon tomorrow (January 7), you're invited to join Merlin Mann (of 43 Folders) and me at Omni's Macworld booth (#612) to talk about OmniFocus. Bring questions!

It is true what many of you have heard: Our buddy, OmniFocus for iPhone, has an update. In this update, we corrected a few things including:

• A bug in which a blank screen could appear after creating a new item
• A bug in which OmniFocus could become unresponsive after converting an action to a project
• A new Settings icon to avoid potential confusion with Apple's Settings application
• Saved Zion from the machines

Okay, maybe we're still working on that last one, but you can find a full list of changes, or check out the application in iTunes, here. (This link opens in iTunes.)

Thanks to everyone for their help!

Dear Diary,

What a long strange trip it's been. I, OmniFocus 1.5, after months of hard work from my users, engineers, ninjas, and test pilots, have finally gone final. I'm available for download on the OmniFocus page!

Today was great.

• I synchronized to another copy of OmniFocus and OmniFocus for iPhone.
• I changed my Styles with my cool, new Style Preference Pane.
• I brushed up on my Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Simplified Chinese.
• And, I showed off some of my slick bug fixes and interface polish.

You can find a detailed list here, uh, ...Diary.

I am so grateful to all my users who helped out along the way.

Thanks for your support!

Love, your BFF,

OmniFocus

We thought this was interesting enough to share: Steven Roberts is using OmniFocus to help manage his Nomadness project. He writes, in part:

”...OmniFocus is amazing. Although I've only been using it for a week, I am already seeing it as a lens that sharpens my awareness of what has to be done next. The myriad tasks spread over nearly a hundred projects each have modal contexts and priorities, and instead of browsing pages of to-do lists I just say, “OK, so I'm here with these tools, and in this particular mood, and I have about this much time. What would move me forward most efficiently?” As one who quickly crumbles into 100% context-switching overhead when trying to juggle more than two or three simultaneous jobs, this is brilliant… and the Mac integration is so smooth that it's actually sexy. I can even snag a task from the middle of an email and lob it over to OF without having to context-switch to “project management” by opening the app!”

(Get a peek at his OmniFocus file!)

“So, I was just on the verge of talking about some of those projects, but I'm going to resist that temptation… there will be plenty of time for that as I actually do them. This is still the moment for floating over a constellation of jellyfish, watching counter-rotating dinoflagellate bioluminescent swirls from dinghy oars, hoisting the sails for a long reach, fragrant curry and music jams with new friends, lazy rainy mornings with droplets spattering hatches, catching a lift from a tidal current, pulling off a tricky maneuver on the first try, landing on uninhabited islands, smiling back at my pal, and dreaming of the way it's all gonna be when OmniFocus tells me that there's simply nothing left to do except cast off the docklines…”

Wow, right? Read the whole post, and learn more about Steven Roberts and his fascinating projects here.

Hi, all!  We've had a very, very busy 2008, and I just wanted to share a little bit of our OmniFocus news with you.

As you know, we shipped OmniFocus 1.0 in January—to critical acclaim, including a Best of Show award at Macworld Expo.  We immediately started working on adding synchronization support for OmniFocus 1.1 (while simultaneously adding support for additional languages to the OmniFocus 1.0.x releases).  Ethan talked a little bit about this on our blog in his post “OmniFocus Sync: It's ALIVE”.

But the bigger news happened in March, when Apple announced that they were going to open up the iPhone to third-party developers.  We knew immediately that OmniFocus had huge potential on the iPhone, because it solved a big problem I have with managing my tasks on a Mac:  I don't always have my Mac with me.  In particular, I might not have it when I think of something I need to remember to do (such as noticing it's time to change the oil), and I might not have it when I'm trying to remember things that need doing (such as which groceries are on my shopping list).  But my iPhone, on the other hand, is with me wherever I go.

In addition to being with me at all times, my iPhone has another really great feature:  it can locate itself on a map.  That meant that we could make OmniFocus automatically know where it is at all times, so it could show me a list of the things I want to get done near where I am right now.

That was it, we were sold:  we had to bring OmniFocus to the iPhone.  As soon as Apple gave us the tools to start developing iPhone apps, we quickly set out to bring OmniFocus to the iPhone and to make it synchronize with the desktop app.  With the help of many long nights and weekends (and the patience of our families), we had the basic app working six weeks later—just in time to enter it into the Apple Design Awards contest, where it won the award for Best iPhone Productivity Application!

Of course, winning an award didn't mean that our work was done:  one of the biggest challenges we faced was that we couldn't ask any of you to help us test the software, because it required a version of the iPhone operating system which wasn't yet available to the public.  We pulled our QA team off all our other projects so they could focus on testing just the iPhone app, and identified and fixed dozens of different places the app could crash.  We continued working around the clock through the July 4 holiday, trying to make sure that we had everything ready to go on the day the App Store launched:  Friday, July 11.  Six weeks ago today.

That day finally came, and we watched with amazement as OmniFocus went as high as #3 on the the App Store's Top 10 list of most popular applications:  11,000 people bought OmniFocus that first weekend alone.  (Thank you!) OmniFocus is still one of the most popular productivity apps on the App Store and has continued to sell at a steady clip ever since.

Which is, of course, why you're only hearing about this six weeks after the fact.  With tens of thousands of new customers using a new app on a new platform comes a lot of work.  Here are a few numbers which might give you a bit of a picture of the last six weeks here at Omni:  we've built over 250 “sneaky peek” releases of OmniFocus 1.1 for the Mac (which syncs with the new iPhone app), and 141 internal test builds of OmniFocus for the iPhone (leading to three more public releases).  Our OmniFocus support ninjas have received over 9,000 email messages (of which we've answered over 7,800), and over 4,000 messages have been posted to our user forums.  (And meanwhile, of course, we've continued to release new versions of OmniGraffle, OmniPlan, OmniOutliner, and OmniWeb.)

We're still not caught up, unfortunately, even with volunteers helping from every department within Omni.  We're hiring more people to help out (and if you know someone who might be interested please send them our way!)—and hopefully that will help us get back to our usual standards.

In the end, we feel very fortunate:  the last six months have been very busy, and while the results aren't yet perfect we're very proud of what we've accomplished so far.  We couldn't have done this without you—so, from all of us here:  Thank You!

Hey, sneaky peek fans! Hot off the servers, get an early look at OmniFocus 1.1 here. OmniFocus 1.1 adds support for synchronizing between computers and with OmniFocus for iPhone and iPod touch.

The sneaky peek page allows you to grab all of our most recent alpha builds for this release, and if you'd like to give it a try we recommend you update to a new build on a fairly frequent basis—and don't forget to turn on frequent backups in your OmniFocus preferences, Just In Case.

Enjoy!

The Omni Group is proud to announce the birth of a new bouncing baby app: OmniFocus for iPhone. Don't let its size fool you. It may fit in your pocket, but it's got all the same classy and nifty that you get with OmniFocus for Mac. For instance:

• Full featured as a stand alone iPhone app, or…
• Sync wirelessly with OmniFocus 1.1 on your Mac (via MobileMe or generic WebDAV)
• Same powerful management of your projects, contexts and actions
• Easy access to special lists such as Due Soon, Overdue, and Flagged

We figured that as long as we were building an iPhone app, we should take advantage of some of the neat stuff you can do on the phone. Here are some of the iPhone-only features that are shipping in the application right now:

• Dynamic location-aware action lists: Let OmniFocus for iPhone put together a list of actions that can be accomplished near to your current location!
• Photo capture: Save quick snapshots to your OmniFocus inbox. If you're using sync, these will show up in OmniFocus on your Mac.
• Voice notes: Sometimes it's just faster to record a quick voice note to yourself.

There's more information and links to the App Store on the OmniFocus for iPhone page.  Also, our very own Michaela has put together a great intro video for OmniFocus for iPhone. If you're curious about the application and would like to see more before purchasing, check it out now. It's a 26MB 15MB download so you might want to option-click that link to start it downloading rather than wait for the page to load it in fully.

In April, Matt Neuburg of TidBITS wrote a review of OmniFocus.  For those who don't know Matt, he has some incredible credentials when it comes to reviewing productivity software, particularly in the outlining space:  as early as 1993, he wrote some great reviews of Acta and Inspiration, IN CONTROL, and MORE.  (And those reviews compare those outliners with the old Apple ][ incarnation of ThinkTank, so clearly it's a space he's been thinking about and working in for a very long time!)

In Matt's review of OmniFocus, he pointed out some of its version 1.0 interface quirks, then said:

With all these gripes, you might think my assessment of OmniFocus would be largely negative. It isn't. I would still insist that OmniFocus is the best expression of GTD on the Mac that I've ever used. Its existence has relieved me of stress and helped me accomplish more in less time.

But those interface quirks did keep him from recommending it without hesitation.  We highly value Matt's feedback, and we immediately started reviewing the quirks he noted to see how we could improve OmniFocus in future updates.

Matt's review was great:  it not only said what was good about the product now, but also talked about how we could improve it in the future—and at the time, I felt no need to comment on it.  But in the last week or two Matt's accompanying screencasts of his frustrations with some of those quirks started getting a lot of additional attention (perhaps because Daring Fireball linked to them), and since lots of people have asked what we think about his feedback I thought I should comment on the quirks he presents in those screencasts.  (Please forgive me if this is a bit longer and drier than our usual blogging fare!)

So, here's my summary of Matt's issues presented in his screencasts along with my response to each issue:

• Matt's first concern is with the ghosted field labels which are displayed when the user moves the mouse over different rows.  One of our design goals was to avoid relying on fixed column headers, because each row in OmniFocus has its own set of fields.  (For example, rows representing inbox items have both a project field and a context field, but rows representing projects have neither.)  For the first several months of the beta we didn't even have the option of headers, but we ultimately decided to introduce them as a way to directly resize fields.  But they're still hidden by default because they change based on the current selection (since each row has its own set of fields).

  Since we didn't have column headers, we started thinking about how to help the user understood which field did what (which is the start date and which is the due date?), and for inspiration we looked to iTunes.  In iTunes, the selected row always has a ghost rating field visible so that you'll know where to click to assign a rating.

  We've applied a similar model to our fields in OmniFocus, adapted to highlight whichever row is under the mouse because you don't have to select a row before you can edit it.  So, when you move the mouse over a row, a ghosted light gray flag icon appears to indicate where you can click to flag an item—and if you show the optional Due date field, a ghosted “Due” label appears in it when it's empty so you'll know what that field is for.  We've tried to tune this highlighting to be pretty subtle and yet still be visible when you are looking where the mouse is currently pointed, but we agree that it's not perfect and we're continuing to improve it.

  Matt's screencasts expressed some concern that the user might be confused over whether the ghost flag was real or not, but they didn't show what happens when either of those fields actually has some content:  the flagged column has a bright orange flag, and the due date column shows an actual date.  (And, of course, the entire row turns red when something is actually due!)

  We now have tens of thousands of customers using OmniFocus, and most of the feedback we've received seems to indicate that this arrangement is working quite well for most of them.  But we're still working to improve it, and we're always willing to listen to alternative suggestions!

• The next quirk was that we were using a non-standard combo box field for our projects and contexts.  It's certainly true that it's not a standard field:  we want the user to be able to type a few letters to quickly select a project or context:  for example, unlike a standard combo box I can type “dofip” or “omnif” to select my “Develop OmniFocus for iPhone” project.  This is an important feature when you're trying to get something out of your head quickly!

  Unfortunately, as Matt points out, those fields do currently have a bug:  there's no good way to cancel a selection if you change your mind about your entry.  You can back out and empty the field using the Delete key, but as he suggests you should also be able to press Escape or click away from the field to cancel input—and unfortunately those actions currently accept your input.  (You can undo your change, of course, but undo shouldn't be a replacement for cancel.)

  But other than that bug (which we're planning to fix), we've been very careful to emulate the standard Cocoa combo box behavior with respect to mouse activation, clicks, and drags.  The other behaviors he described are the way standard Cocoa controls behave:  when you drag down on a combo box, the highlight follows the mouse and releasing the mouse pointer selects whichever item is currently highlighted.  But if you instead click on the combo box to open the list (which is what he did), mouse movements are ignored until you click on an item to choose it.

• Similarly, Matt is concerned about issues with the calendar widget, stating that these problems are all caused because we've “designed these bad widgets” rather than just using the stock Cocoa widgets that “just work.”  We totally agree with him about the misbehaviors of the widget itself, but the irony here is that we're actually using the stock NSCalendarView control.  We didn't write our own; we have no desire to write our own.  (But we do want it to work right, so perhaps we'll have to write one to fix some of those issues!)

  (As an aside, he could have cancelled his selection by just clicking back on the same calendar icon he used to open that calendar, rather than moving the mouse first.  But we still agree that clicking somewhere else should also have cancelled the calendar selection.)

• On to the second screencast!  Matt's first issue in this screencast is that there's no visible focus when nothing is selected.  (Matt didn't demonstrate this, but this is only an issue when there's no selection:  if there's one or more items selected in either the sidebar or the main outline, you can tell which has focus because its selection appears in your highlight color rather than in gray.)  Well, we agree, that's a problem, and unfortunately this is a common issue in Mac applications when there's no selection.  (Mail has the same issue with its sidebar, for example.)  I haven't yet seen a good solution for this, but if you have I'd love a pointer!

• Matt's next issue was with our column resizing behavior:  “Have you ever seen a Mac program where when you widen and narrow a column the entire window widens and narrows like that?”  Well, actually, I'm guessing you have, since we borrowed that behavior from the Finder!  If you open a Finder window and switch to Column view, then drag the last column wider than the window and then narrower again, you'll find that it makes the whole window wider and then narrower.

  Now, just because there's precedent in the Finder for a window resizing along with a column doesn't mean I'm saying that this is the most desirable behavior.  But what is?  What exactly do you expect to happen when you make the title field wider or narrower?  Should we just pick another field at random to make wider or narrower to compensate for that change?  Or should the column widths no longer match up with the width of the window, leading to lost fields off the edge or to dead space on the inside of the edge?  Most approaches we've seen lead to lots of fiddling to try get all the columns to add up to just the right width to fit within the window.

  [EDIT: Expanding on this a bit to explain the problems with other approaches in more detail.]

  We considered Finder's list view behavior (which we also use in OmniOutliner) of introducing a scrollbar, but that's not perfect either:  in OmniFocus, everybody wants to see all the fields all the time, not some subset.  (This is especially true because we have different fields on different rows.)  If we hide some of those fields behind a scrollable area, the very next thing the user will want to do is to try to make the window fit the new width of the columns, which (as I mentioned above) can take a lot of fiddling.  We were trying to save people this extra fiddly step by making the window fit at all times.

  We also considered Mail's solution:  Mail solves the “exact width” fiddling problem by taking the size away from another field.  But with that approach, making the project field wider would make the context field narrower, which isn't usually what people are trying to accomplish.  (If they finally got their Context field just the right size to fit all their contexts, they don't really want it getting smaller just because they now need to make their Project field a little wider!)

  [END EDIT]

  Maybe a preference is in order here?  Again, suggestions for how to solve this are welcome!  Just remember, one important design principle is that the edge that you're resizing should stay under the mouse, not wander off somewhere else.

• Next, Matt demonstrates a bug where a row beeps if you double-click on its handle—which, yes, is a bug.  We'll fix it!  (Double-clicking on a project opens it in a new window, but you can't open an individual action in its own window so that currently beeps.  What it should do is fall back on the single-click behavior, not beep!)

• Matt points out that it's very unclear exactly where to click to expand or collapse a row rather than selecting or dragging it.  We agree that it's hard to tell exactly which pixels will do what, and I think the easy solution here would be for us to give better mouse pointer feedback (like we do when you mouse over the resize bars in the column headers).

  (As an aside, you don't have to click precisely on the little black dot on the left to drag a row around:  you can actually drag a row vertically from anywhere on the row:  that handle, or the checkbox, or even the text itself.)

• Finally, Matt asks what you can do to select nothing.  Well, good question!  The way to select nothing in OmniFocus is exactly the same way as you select nothing in the Finder or iTunes or Mail:  you either click on some empty space that isn't selectable (which isn't always easy to find, unfortunately), or you command-click on your current selection to toggle it.  (I wish this were more obvious, but this is the standard Mac behavior.) [EDIT: Chris Campbell's comment below made me realize that OmniFocus does have a Deselect All command in the Edit menu, with a keyboard shortcut of Shift-Command-A.]

Let me conclude by saying once again that I have a lot of respect for Matt's feedback:  he's been writing about this application category for a very long time, and he's pointed out some important issues which we hope to address as soon as possible.  Our goal is to fully earn his final words from the review:

I've raved in the past about Omni's interfaces; OmniGraffle is brilliant for drawing diagrams, and OmniPlan is an astounding accomplishment, a triumph of interface ingenuity and the first project management application I've come even close to comprehending. I've little doubt, and much hope, that the same standards of excellence can be applied to OmniFocus; when OmniFocus has the fluid usability of Omni's other applications, I'll be eager to recommend it.

Thanks, Matt:  we're working on it!  (And thank you, reader, for taking the time to read all this; if you have any thoughts of your own, we always welcome your feedback!  The best way to make sure the right people see your suggestions is to send them in email to omnifocus@omnigroup.com.)

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