The Omni Group

Thanks to the unpredictable timeframe of  Apple's App Store review process, today there are two new releases of OmniGraphSketcher available.

OmniGraphSketcher for iPad 1.1 is a significant update which focuses on adding data import capability and improving the user experience. Now that we've had time to use OmniGraphSketcher on actual iPads, we've adjusted the draw and fill tools to make graphing even easier and faster, and we've fixed issues affecting the document browser, graph editor, and info popovers. We've also had a chance to implement the data importing feature that is available in OmniGraphSketcher for Mac. Thanks to those of you who have patiently waited for import, and those who have provided feedback via the App Store and Email! 

Those of you running OmniGraphSketcher 1.1.1 beta 1 on the Mac may have noticed that the expiration date was fast approaching! We don't normally like to cut things this close, but developing two versions simultaneously has proved to be tricky. Beta 3 improves our Japanese and French localizations, and fixes a problem with entering Japanese text. We've also included some smaller fixes and improvements related to the iPad app. You can grab this release via our downloads page or via software update; as always please don't hesitate to email or Help > Send Feedback.

(If you're wondering what happened to beta 2, it was released and then immediately replaced due to a nasty bug)

Amidst all the craziness going on with iPad development, this version of OmniGraffle got pushed to the wayside a wee tad, we've basically been ready to go final with it but kept delaying the release in order to work on that other OmniGraffle project.

To sum up (for those of you who may not have been keeping up with the beta releases), we've added some preferences to disable the Multi-Touch trackpad gestures, as well as some preferences for dealing with momentum scrolling if you're using a Magic Mouse, and fixed a fair number of bugs associated with shared layers and Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard".

You can find the disk images to download at our newly-revamped downloads page, and read up at the historical release notes page.

Today we took a break from iPad development and updating the website to push out the first beta of OmniGraphSketcher 1.1.1. This release includes French and Japanese localizations, as well as a fix for a pesky crash involving Undo and lots of other smaller tweaks and fixes. You get get this release via the OmniGraphSketcher downloads page; please be sure to email us (or Help > Send Feedback within the application) with any questions or feedback.

Between iPad development meetings, wireframing, mocking things up, and general UI theorycrafting, I managed to remember to release OmniGraffle 5.2.2 rc 1, but almost forgot to tell anyone about it.

So, beta testing went well, and we're here at release candidate stage. Simple enough.

You may find the release candidate at our beta page, and as always, release notes await.

There just happens to be another platform that we sometimes develop for, that's not the iPad, and as such we've just released a beta version of OmniGraffle and OmniGraffle Professional 5.2.2.

This release contains a good many bug fixes dealing with shared layers and Mac OS 10.6 compatibility, along with fixes to a number of crashes when working with Visio files, PDFs, and subgraphs.

We've added a preference to turn off multi-touch gestures on laptops that have that feature, and a last-minute hidden preference to disable the scrollwheel to zoom in and out when Commmand is held down, for those of you using Apple's new Magic Mouse.

Much more information is in the release notes page, and downloads are on the beta page.

I was going to write a post about managing New Year's resolutions, then I thought maybe the topic of New Year's resolutions has gotten kind of tired and no one even does them any more, then I thought well it's still a good subject because everyone's got goals no matter what time of year it is, then I got distracted by this photo and laughed for about ten straight minutes because HAAAAAA, then my boss was all hey have you got that new blog entry written yet, and I was like OH YES INDEED JUST FORMATTING THE HTMSQLCSSWTF FOR THE WEB INTERFUNCTION.

Anyway, if you happen to have made some resolutions this year, how do you plan to stay on top of them? With some software, perhaps? Maybe even some Omni software? (Is my incessant eyebrow-waggling and elbow-jabbing getting annoying yet? HMMM?) Let us take a look at some of our fine productivity applications, with creating and managing resolutions in mind.

First, OmniGraphSketcher. If you're anything like me the idea of spending your free time creating graphs is about as appealing as, oh, creating pie charts. Which is to say, not all that appealing. Unless there's actual pie involved.

At first I wasn't sure how to translate my goals into graphs, but the more I thought about it the more ideas popped into my mind. Here's an example of the progress I've made towards one of my 2010 resolutions, which is to run a half marathon on February 28th:

These charts document the training runs I did in November and December, with the bar chart representing the miles I ran, and the line graph along the top representing my pace.

Now, as our lead OmniGraphSketcher developer gently chided me, this isn't exactly a best practice example, because they have different y-scales. Which I think means I should have created separate graphs for pace and mileage to make it more clear what I'm analyzing. But I kind of like the way it looks as is, so you'll just have to pardon my rebellion.

I'll be honest, I hadn't played with OmniGraphSketcher much before putting these documents together, and what do you know, the things we say about it are actually true! It's super easy to use, it's nowhere near as painful as certain other programs that rhyme with Shmexel, and the results are very pretty even if you're kind of a mouthbreather when it comes to data visualization. And hey, how motivating is it to actually see the steps you've made towards completing a goal? Much more rewarding than, say, counting your foot blisters.

Moving on to OmniFocus! OmniFocus is probably the most obvious choice for goal management, and the key to making the most of it is turning those high-level ambitions into actionable next steps. There's, you know, a whole school of thought on how to do this (you may have heard of a little system called Getting Things Done?), but the idea is to spend some time thinking about what you need to do in order to keep that resolution. A nebulous, undefined goal doesn't do you much good, right?

Bad:

Better:

One option for managing your big goals in OmniFocus is to keep an action simply titled "Review 2010 Resolutions" (or whatever), and set it to repeat every few months. Note that dragging a project or action into the note field of another will create a link back to the first item, so you can add little shortcuts from your resolution items to their respective projects.

Lastly, OmniGraffle! Perhaps unsurprisingly, the overall Omni response to my request for personal goal-focused information that I could slap on our public blog was not unlike a Zork session:

>SEND EMAIL

Time passes.

Eventually after some truly pathetic begging on my part (the things I do for this blog! And you thought I just posted silly links and typos!), one of our esteemed Support Ninjas, Kris, sent over a really neat OmniGraffle document that's modeled after a chalkboard he and his partner have in their home. The top and bottom circles represent their individual goals, with their mutual goals in the yellow center circle.

Goals inside the circle are targeted for 2010, goals on the border are within the next year or two, and anything outside of the circle is scheduled for the two to five year range. "We use this to be clear about what our priorities are and where we're at with them—not to mention all the secret juju that comes from visualization," said Kris, right before he whipped a throwing star at my head for mocking his desire to learn the banjo.

He also shared these tips:

"The cool thing about having a Graffle doc of this is that it's easy to edit, rearrange, re-prioritize and add new things as they come up... then reflect those changes at home. I can keep a PDF copy of the file with me so that when I'm out shopping (for instance) I can pull up the ol' Goal Board and evaluate the purchase against my priorities. Also, the actual Graffle doc has this really cool capability where you can assign an action to an object—clicking an object (with the selection tool) will open a URL, a file, run an applescript, etc. I use this to link to things that I desperately want—again, the mystical power of visualization. I also use this to link to my OmniFocus projects that reflect these goals."

Awesome, right? Don't ever question the power of visualization, people.

So! How about you folks? Do you have any tips to share for making all your MMX dreams come true?

The first Omni release of 2010! No new features here, but if you used OmniOutliner in Chinese you probably noticed that it was showing up in another language! Sorry about that, the Chinese localization was missing in the 3.9.4 release but it's back now! You can download this version from our site or using the software updater.

If you encounter any problems or have a question, please contact us at omnioutliner@omnigroup.com or by using the Help -> Send Feedback option in the app. Thanks!

Hello! It's kind of strange to think that it's been over a year since I first posted Helpify. If you haven't met it, Helpify is a tool for Mac developers to generate Apple Help Books for their software. We use it here, of course, and it has seen a bit of popularity outside of Omni too.

Version 1.5 incorporates a lot of improvements that were suggested (or written!) by kind folks in the Mac community. This time around, Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software was especially helpful in making sure our indexing process works equally well on Snow Leopard and earlier versions of Mac OS X.

And thanks to Automator, Helpify is now an applet, not just a command-line script. You can drop your source outline right on it. Other new niceties include variables stored inside the source outline instead of inside the script, and better handling of anchors that appear at the top of a page.

I hope you find this new version of Helpify useful. Please let us know what you think!

Update: Version 1.5.1 fixes a problem parsing the special Variables section. Thanks to John Alexander for pointing it out.

Update: Version 1.5.2 fixes a problem with setting up the Box style and with a bogus link to a Variables page on the last page. Thanks to Nicholas Riley.

Download Helpify 1.5.2

OmniOutliner 3.9.4 is now available which fixes a compatibility issue a few Automator actions had. It also contains localized versions of the updated help file from version 3.9.3 as well as a couple export bug fixes.

Thank you everyone who helped test the 3.9.4 betas to make sure the new build process didn't introduce any bugs, we appreciate the help!

When you're ready, you can grab this version through OmniOutliner's software updater or from our site where you will also find the full release notes. And as always, if you have any questions or run into trouble, please email us at omnioutliner@omnigroup.com or use the Help -> Send Feedback option in the app.

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