Here’s a list of things that have changed recently. Some of them are changes from the earlier OmniFocus 2 test, and some are changes from version 1.

• Interface: The sidebar, main outline, and inspectors have all been re-designed by our UX team incorporating your feedback.
• Pro/Standard: You can switch between the Pro and Standard editions in the Free Trial Mode sub-menu of the OmniFocus menu. The big Pro features you want to know about are Perspectives, Focus, and Applescript; we’ll be tweaking some other stuff over the course of the test.

• OmniFocus 2 is Sandboxed and Requires Mavericks: This has allowed us to adopt some new features, and generally develop the app more quickly. However, we’ve also had to drop support for a few features where the maintenance burden had become prohibitive.

  • Growl: We’re using the standard Notification Center instead.
  • Mail Rule: While you can still create your own rules, we found that Mail’s quirks made supporting our default installed one too difficult. We hope those of you who sync with Omni Sync Server will find Mail Drop a convenient, reliable alternative.
  • Bonjour Sync: If you aren’t comfortable syncing your data “in the cloud”, you may want to read our guide on how to set up your own WebDAV server.
  • File Locations: To accommodate Sandboxing, it was necessary to move the OmniFocus database, backups, and preference files. This also means you can run OmniFocus 1 and OmniFocus 2 side-by-side, synced to the same server database or different ones. In version 2, your database, preferences, and so forth now live here:

    ~/Library/Containers/com.omnigroup.OmniFocus2

• Terminology: We’ve changed the names of a few things, hopefully making them clearer.

  • Start Date is now Defer Date: You don’t actually have to start an action on this date. You just know you’re not going to start it before this date.
  • Next Action is now First Available Action: Any action whose pre-requisites have all been met (Defer Date, preceding tasks in a sequential project, etc.) might be your next action. However, we’d still like you to have the option of highlighting the first available action in each project as a way to filter down to just a few actions that are quite likely to be worth doing soon.

• Some Smaller Touches that we think will make using OmniFocus 2 a lot better:

  • Default Time for ‘Defer Until’ Dates: There is now a setting in Preferences to specify a default time when deferring an action or project until a future date. The iOS apps will not respect this preference until we release an update for them. (This is one of the 5 most-requested features for this app right now.)
  • Quick Open: Kinda like Quick Entry, but for viewing instead of adding things.
  • Expectations Bar: If you’re viewing something other than your whole main database–a focus, an archive, or a backup–this band of color below the toolbar will remind you that you’re not in Kansas anymore.
  • Perspectives: Restored the power tools from OmniFocus 1. Then redesigned them to be prettier.
  • Recent Edits: Added a new built-in perspective which shows recent changes.
  • View Options: The Eye of Sauron is there, and changes what you’re looking at.
  • Search: Now you’ve got the advantage when your actions try to play hide-n-seek with you.
  • Keyboard Preferences: Behaviors for escape, return, and other keys in the main outline default to the New-Fangled (aka “Modern”) set, but if you prefer the tried-and-true, you can opt for “Classic Mode” in the General Preferences.
  • Backup Limits: OmniFocus now backs up every 2 hours, and keeps 100 backups. For someone who runs OmniFocus continuously, this provides over a week of backups.
  • Expiration Countdown: There’s a counter in the upper right corner of your window. After release, it will let you know how many days until your trial license expires. For now it lets you know how long you have until this build demands that you download a newer one. (Though we hope you’ll download an update almost every day.)