OmniOutliner for iPad: First Screenshots!

The Blog

by Ken Case on May 9, 2011

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!

Comments

The OmniOutliner app is stunning! Thanks for the screenshots. The decision to purchase OO will be an easy one.

Michael J. Flower

05.09.11 9:41 PM

Looks great! Can’t wait! Dropbox compatibility next?

Keith

05.09.11 9:45 PM

You had me at checkboxes; this’ll be great in the classroom. Can’t wait!

Sean

05.09.11 9:46 PM

I agree with Keith, add in Dropbox compatibility and you’ve won.

Rob

05.09.11 9:54 PM

Gotta have Dropbox support ... Please??

Michael

05.09.11 9:58 PM

Does this mean sync is not supported in this initial release? Like OmniFocus, the strength in having mac/ipad/iphone versions is the flexibility in being able to update your one live source through any of those devices and have them sync’d. I’ve got a sinking feeling this ipad version of OO won’t sync with the desktop version and would require you manually upload the “latest version” of your document to your webdav / idisk after making a change on say the ipad, and then re-opening that file on your desktop OO to get those changes. Please tell me I’ve got that wrong? I don’t see a sync option in OO3 though (like the sync options in OF), hence my conclusion. Still looking great and I’ll be the first to buy it, but if you have to manually track your changes to documents between platforms, it would be very limiting in its capabilities.

Deano

05.09.11 10:19 PM

Not digging the brown toolbars. Any way to change?

Chris

05.09.11 10:25 PM

Suggested features:

PDF Export/Printing. iPad is a tablet computer, give its software some base functionality.

Dropbox not needed for me but real time sync would be a definitive USP.

Drawing mode. Nothing extensive with ten kinds of background but I would like to have a button that just brings up a White page which I can sketch a graph or orga structure on and then have it in my outline. Just like I could, as you said, include pictures from other sources. No myriads of formatting options needed there, just pen and paper, maybe a color or two. I don’t want to switch to other apps during meetings though.

Legal pad background for notes. Seriously. I like legal pad.

Chris

05.09.11 11:31 PM

This looks fantastic, but is there absolutely no syncing in this version? Some sort of syncing, like OmniFocus has, would be ideal. Live interaction with Dropbox would be great, too.

It will be a real pain to import & export documents all the time, and it will be a pain to manually remember where our latest version of each document is located: “Is it on my Mac? Is it on my iPad?”

Scott Rose

05.09.11 11:42 PM

I would like to add a big +1 to syncing, although the app looks great, syncing via OmniSync or WebDav is a luxury that we have grown to need from OmniFocus.

Adam

05.10.11 12:05 AM

Looks great - can’t wait to get my hands on it.

However, Dropbox support is a really important for me so hopefully it can be added soon.

(A basic iPhone version would be great too, but I’m not holding my breath on that one.)

Tam

05.10.11 1:01 AM

Absolutely gorgeous UI. I need this software. I love The Omni Group so much.

Hammy Havoc

05.10.11 1:59 AM

I absolutely love everything that Omni does, so I know it’ll be on my shopping list… but not until there’s Dropbox or OmniServer Sync. Once you do that, it’s a no-brainer. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

Victoria Bampton

05.10.11 2:10 AM

Also chiming in for dropbox. So many mote taking apps—I’m reviewing over a dozen at the moment—that it’s going to take some stellar uniqueness to make a 19.95 cost palatable. The multi columns and named styles should do the trick but serious workflow support like dropbox will be necessary for the long haul. Pages suffers from this kind of insularity and I know many students who don’t use it because of it’s lack of decent export ( dropbox).

Personally, I’ve been in the industry since 1983 and I’m not adverse to setting up some hackinsh solution to get things working the way I want. I am also not adverse to using an elegant solution when one is provided. Dropbox is an elegant solution. Please recognise and support it fully.

Kel

05.10.11 2:24 AM

It looks like you have made excellent choices for the critical behaviours controlling indenting/outdenting and for adding topics. The concept of hiding columns behind the first one is very interesting.

I see that all your screenshots are portrait; any landscape ones?

It seems the design is now to place the bullet in a column of its own and not with the topic, which might have implications for some legal documents.

I presume that D&D to iTunes for moving files between the Mac and the iPad is a given? Sync obviously very desirable.

Great work and really looking forward to release.

Joel M. Sciamma

05.10.11 2:53 AM

Please, please include dropbox support.

Peter

05.10.11 3:09 AM

I would love to see the following features supported:
Intelligent syncing/versioning
PDF export
audio recording
Drop box
Drawing/doodling

But I am still buying it day 1

Matt

05.10.11 3:46 AM

Ditto for landscape support/pictures

Matt

05.10.11 3:47 AM

OMG

I will purchase this the second it becomes available.

Yes, syncing such as the amazing OF would be great, but that is not holding me back.

All in good time I’m sure.

Well done!

StephenL

05.10.11 4:37 AM

Webdav is all I need. Thanks

Oomu

05.10.11 4:58 AM

+1 for Dropbox.

DK

05.10.11 6:06 AM

I’m jumping on the bandwagon!

It’s does look great but I’m worried about syncing issues. Come on guys, I’m sure you expected this reaction.

Saying that, if you commit to improved syncing, I will be buying day one!

Mark

05.10.11 6:25 AM

WOW… well done Outliner team… absolutely fantastic. You have really captured the best of the usability of the iPad in a single app. I hope this can replace iWriter as my note-taking app now, too.

Absolutely fantastic… and thanks for posting screenshots!

Steve Pye

05.10.11 6:48 AM

I hope Bluetooth keyboard support is there for creating outlines. I loathe having to reach for the screen to do simple text editing tasks.

Kel

05.10.11 8:53 AM

Instabuy. But…. landscape support ?

Andy

05.10.11 9:47 AM

Ditto on the keyboard support. Been using my iPad more and more at conferences for note-taking, and have yet to find a good outlining app that plays well with the keyboard.

Also, basic import/export with markdown would be fantastic. But nowhere near as keyboard friendliness.

W. Shaw

05.10.11 9:48 AM

OmniOutliner looks fantastic, can’t wait to get it—but no Dropbox support in 1.0? Really?

Andy

05.10.11 10:00 AM

Looks terrific! But I’d also love to see Dropbox support in 1.1!

Alfred

05.10.11 10:12 AM

Kel,

there is Bluetooth keyboard support, and you can indent and outdent with the tab key or delete key (if at the beginning of a row). My understanding is that the API Apple provides only allows you to take keyboard input while editing a field, so it doesn’t seem to be possible to use the arrow keys to move around the outline, for example. But for putting down substantial amounts of text without using the onscreen keyboard, it works. That said, the + sign in the lower toolbar seen in Ken’s 2nd bonus screenshot handles the Add Previous Row, Child, Aunt tasks quite easily.

Matt and Joel,

landscape works fine, and looks just like portrait, except wider and not as tall. Nothing is hidden in one orientation, unlike in OmniFocus, where the sidebar disappears in portrait.

As for the “bullet”, the thing on the left edge is the row handle or disclosure triangle, and is not part of the text of the document. Numbering/lettering still shows up in the actual column, as seen in the very first screenshot.

iTunes can pull documents straight out of OO in OO3 format, or you can export a copy of a document into OPML, DHTML, HTML, or text for retrieval by iTunes. All 5 formats can be emailed or saved via WebDAV.

Saving to the Omni Sync Server is a snap, and I just keep my active documents there for access from either iPad or Mac. No adjustment needed on the Mac, and I just save the file back to the OSS when I’m done editing on the iPad. Yes, full Dropbox support would be nice (it’d be nice if the DropDAV people could fix their bugs so that they worked with the Omni apps, too) but I expect to edit quite a few outlines before that happens.

Anyone who won’t buy it because it doesn’t have Dropbox:

If you go into it with a mindset that it is going to be an insurmountable problem, it will be. If that’s the case, you don’t get to use OO on the iPad, so if you want to use it, concentrate on what it will enable you to do, rather than grumbling that everyone else worked on making it easy to get your files in and out of their tool (but didn’t make a tool that made you want to do so!) It’s all too easy to let one’s imagination of all the problems get in the way of the realization that the problems aren’t quite as bad as they seem. If your workflow calls for you to switch back and forth between Mac and iPad every 3 minutes, yeah, you’ll probably be miserable, not least because you’ll have to have the Mac save and reload the document each time, not just the iPad.

Bottom line: if you use OmniOutliner on the Mac, and have an iPad, buy this. When you fire it up, tap the Omni button, then Contact Omni, and tell them you need Dropbox support if that’s important to you.

Bill

05.10.11 10:23 AM

I think Dropbox support is key for any tool that works with documents on the iPad.

It’s not the best way to do it, but since it does WebDAV, you can use a service like DropDAV to integrate Dropbox and WebDAV.

There’s a pay site and one called DropDAV limited that only does files up to 1mb that would probably does the trick for Omni Outliner files.

Winston Baccus

05.10.11 10:38 AM

How about searching? Within a document or across multiple documents? I can’t tell from the screenshots.

Otherwise looks really nice!

Dennis

05.10.11 11:09 AM

Bill, how’s the Omni Sync Server work for this purpose at the Mac end? Just mount as a webdav drive? I’ve only used it for OmniFocus syncing until now, but it sounds like there potentially could be a workaround for Dropbox using SymLinks to keep files on the OSS as well as Dropbox?

Victoria Bampton

05.10.11 11:43 AM

looks great. can’t wait!

sonofwitz

05.10.11 11:47 AM

You have no idea how long I have been waiting for this! Oh - you probably do.

Dropbox support????

Alan

05.10.11 11:52 AM

Victoria,

yes, you just mount it as a webdav drive, https://sync.omnigroup.com/<yourusername> via Go->Connect to Server… in the Finder.

I don’t think the symbolic link trick could work. If you wrote the file to the OSS, it would need to be able to interpret the symbolic link for you to put the file there, and it isn’t going to know anything about your Dropbox credentials (so it can’t deliver them to the Dropbox server), nor would it be able to write files to your Mac’s filesystem (so it can’t let you do that). If you could write directly to the Dropbox, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation :-)

Bill

05.10.11 1:34 PM

If this does even half of what you describe I am in and already perturbed that it is taking so long to get out of review.

I have tried quite a few iPad apps that are ok for writing chucks of text but none yet that works as a decent outliner.

You have my hopes waayyy up!

Also, what about RTF and Latex exports?

Steve

05.10.11 1:39 PM

I don’t really care about Dropbox. What I care about is real syncing.

Can I easily sit at my laptop and work on a document, then easily use it on my iPad, and go back and forth?

If I have to manually track versions, that will be very tedious and annoying. If the app is good enough to be fully functional iPad-only, then I will probably just deal with it.

If the app really works better when I, say, do major editing on OS X and minor editing on iPad, then I will probably not end up using the app very much.

Gopiballava

05.10.11 2:15 PM

Can’t wait. I’ve been using OO since it came free on the old PowerBooks. Wonderful and productive program. One of the best. I agree with Bill, not sweat DropBox at the onset, but should be part of the mix at some point.

John Houghton

05.10.11 2:22 PM

I’m not sure why there is so much fuss over Dropbox.
In a couple of months Apple is going to have a service which will likely be better than Dropbox and directly tied into all their devices.

sonofwitz

05.10.11 3:21 PM

Please also include SugarSync sync if you include DropBox sync, as many iPad programs do. But some kind of dedicated sync would perhaps be more useful. At least the way I use OmniOutliner, it’s more similar to a calendar or todo list than a word document. I only have a few OmniOutliner documents in active use, as opposed to thousands of word document.

Anyway, I cannot wait! Since I discovered OmniOutliner, it has become my most used application.

Anders Host-Madsen

05.10.11 4:45 PM

Looks great, thanks!

+1 on the free-hand drawing—that would make it a really great class notes app. Or maybe integrate OmniGraffle somehow? Most of my notetaking requires freehand drawing + using all kinds of weird symbols + regular writing.

I haven’t used OmniGraffle for iPad… would I be able to do a quick double-tap, switch to OG, draw a diagram or freehand, copy it, switch back and paste it in?

+1 on Dropbox or some kind of sync… if Apple is coming out with their own cloud sync or some kind of actually-functional iDisk, I’d wait for that. If that is not on the horizon, Dropbox would be handy.

Congrats on the great new app!

Omnivore

05.10.11 10:14 PM

Sonofwitz,

Have you ever used dropbox? When every app on a device supports it and it is fully cross platform it is harder to beat it for seamlessness. Just because Apple is making a solution does not automatically mean it will be better. Dropbox is NOW and is part of millions of people’s workflow NOW. I, for one, doubt that Apple’s solution will be as elegant as you likely suspect, particularly when it comes to cross platformage.

It is a hard pill to swallow when it is so ingrained in nearly every productivity app except those from Omni and Omni’s are by far the most expensive.

Kel

05.10.11 10:55 PM

Omnivore,

yes, it is possible to switch to OmniGraffle (or OmniGraphSketcher), make some sort of diagram or graph, copy it, switch back to OmniOutliner and paste it in. Might be a challenge to keep up with a lecturer, however. I was able to copy and paste a freehand figure directly from OmniGraffle into OmniOutliner, but had to save the graph from OmniGraphSketcher to the Photos app as an intermediate step, which makes it a bit slower. Don’t know if that’s a bug, memory limitation, or what.

Bill

05.10.11 11:00 PM

I’m excited on this news. But why the app in Brown, having apparently contrast to its yellow icon.

Yang

05.11.11 7:56 AM

I’m just happy to see that Leafy Sea Dragon is included in the deal! :D

Can’t wait to buy it.

scott

05.11.11 9:02 AM

Not for nothing but this is [redacted] great news! Dropbox…schmockbox…

Redbone

05.11.11 11:37 AM

Team Member

Thanks for the enthusiasm, Redbone, but again; let’s keep it clean, okay? This is a family joint. :-)

Brian

05.11.11 12:24 PM

Kel,
Yeah, I’ve used Dropbox, and it works great. I’m not sure why Omni isn’t going that route, but I think people are making too much fuss, that’s all. I fully agree with what Bill said above about imagining “insurmountable problems”. Syncing these documents between mutliple devices isn’t a big deal for me, I’ve never really had that sort of luxury, so I’m used to version management for my projects. Now, for Omnifocus, which is the reason I bought an iPhone, I couldn’t imagine using it without almost instant syncing between the devices because I’m using ONE document between them all. But with OmniOutliner, I won’t be instantly switching between device/context so quickly. And frankly, I don’t trust some free third party service to hold my master file. For me a drop box is just for transfer. I wouldn’t trust my projects to live in the cloud so exclusively.

Just my opinion. I’m just excited to finally get OO happening on a tablet. I use it a lot on the desktop, but I’ll use it 20x more on the iPad. For me, getting this app will be a sort of culmination of hopes. When the iPhone was demoed I said forget about the phone, make it bigger and put OmniOutliner on it. OO for iPad is about to make that vision real.

sonofwitz

05.11.11 1:03 PM

I too am so looking forward to OO iPad. I love OG and OF and use them every day. Good times.

Kel

05.11.11 1:12 PM

I never dreamed I would feel this way over a piece of software, but I can’t wait for OO for iPad any longer. It feels like it has been forever. Please Apple, finish my suffering, I want it NOW!

Zina

05.11.11 1:59 PM

I am literally giddy with excitement! Can you post a screenshot of how we can organize all of our outlines and how we select one to open? Thanks!

Sarah

05.11.11 2:40 PM

Dropbox synch or omni synch server are great, of course, but synch onto any WebDAV drive would be cool - real synch, not just save to / load from WebDAV.

In some lines of work, keeping data on other people’s servers is just not an option ... And yet, we would still like to be able to use omnioutline.

Any chances of something like that happening?

Thomas

05.11.11 3:42 PM

@Zina,
I agree. I’ve never felt like this about a piece of software.
I did geek out over Omnifocus for iPad, but that was just because I was just getting into OmniFocus right then and realizing how much it could help me.
But OO for iPad, I’ve dreamt about…

sonofwitz

05.11.11 4:42 PM

Damn you, Omni Group! It looks like you’ve produced another product I must have. Here…just take my wallet.

Seriously, I’m looking forward to trying out OO for iPad.

Ousley

05.11.11 9:22 PM

Speaking of Leafy, can we paste in video too? At least from our camera roll?

Keith

05.11.11 10:07 PM

@Sarah,

I too would like to see how they intend to let us organise our documents. If it’s cover flow design then I think my idea of consolidating all my notes into this app will fail. Cover flow for file selection is a marketing ploy that fails disgracefully when it comes to anything exceeding a dozen or so documents. Omnigraffle, which I use daily and have over 100 charts is a royal pain in this regard. I have adopted a rigid naming convention for my documents, unfortunately that is the ONLY thing saving it from absolute failure.

Sorry to harsh out on it but I’m only reflecting the hype that cover flow represents. If cover flow is the only document management solution present in OO then I might even simply not buy it. If they have anything more robust then of course I’ll be there on day one as I’m truly excited about the app. :)

Kel

05.12.11 8:07 AM

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