The OmniFocus for Mac 2.0 Wish List

Sven Fechner of Simplicity is Bliss:

I hardly use the project or task notes as the UX choice made is too clunky for me. It is clearly a concept coming from OmniOutliner, which, using the Kinkless GTD Scripts, was the original source of inspiration for OmniFocus. However, it doesn’t really work for longer notes, any font size you chose for the note section is either too small or too big, if you insert attachments things start looking awkward, … In my eyes there are quite some challenges with the way notes are handled in the current OmniFocus UI.

I’d like to cut and paste Fetcher’s entire list of ideas for OmniFocus 2.0 here, but his complaints about notes (in both OmniFocus and OmniOutliner) hit the nail on the head and sum up the issues about giving ideas or tasks additional details.

The one challenge that OmniFocus and other apps face is mitigating how you manage an “everything box.” OmniFocus ultimately becomes and should become a sort of outbox where you follow up on email, gather your errands for the afternoon, and follow decisive actions to complete a project. Where the lines begin to blur is with contexts and details. Contexts are the sort of tags that specify either the person, thing, or place you need to be in to complete a task, and details are the additional reference materials or notes associated with a task.

If your task is concise and straightforward (you should never have to think about the action), you shouldn’t need any supporting details. This changes however if you need a reminder for an article (Paste attached note as a quote in “Apple Q1 2012 Results”) or if you need to attach a picture, lines from an email, or need to type out what someone gave to you in paper form. OmniFocus could really use a boost in how documents are attached. An icon inline with text or a full blown image that can get cut off due to column-width aren’t good ways to display supporting details for tasks and projects.

There are other good opinions in the article too. I personally don’t need or want themes in OmniFocus, but I would love to see better email handling and the ability create projects based off templates of pre-written tasks (you can sort of do that now, but it’s messy).