8.7.10 - OmniOutliner 3.0.2
OmniOutliner Professional is a powerful, intuitive idea and information management application for Mac OSX. If you've never really considered what an outlining application can do, it is definitely time you did. I can just about promise that tasks you've been using multiple applications for will fit entirely into this software with creative room to spare.
Features: Unicode support, very broad selection of outlining and formatting tools, multiple data types including checklists and even a bit of spreadsheet capability thrown in to calculate column totals. To this, Omni adds the ability to handle text, image, URLs, file attachments, sound and quicktime movies, and the ability to fire off Applescript. Once your outline is finished, you can export it in a gratifyingly long list of formats, as well as print it or turn it into a full-blown presentation.
You can download OmniOutliner Pro 3 (mmmph... that's a bit cumbersome... from here on, it'll be "OOP 3") and try it before buying. As you can see from my sample document at the right, OOP 3 handles mixed fonts, unicode, images and lists while managing outline levels at the same time. While constructing the sample document, OOP 3 never did anything unexpected, and several times surprised me by doing not only "the right thing" but some "really cool things" as well. For instance, moving outline levels is almost insanely easy, though upon walking up to the software blind, you're almost certain to (a) have some wrong ideas about how to go about it and (b) try to do some things that would wreck the document if OOP 3 just let you do them. On the contrary, it seems to figure out what you really wanted, and it does that, instead. Very slick. I am impressed.
Of course, OOP 3 is an outliner (duh!) and that brings some interesting capabilities to the table. This application can seamlessly collapse any part or parts of the document at any point in your workflow, which allows you to concentrate on what you're doing right at that moment. It also lets you navigate more easily, as a collapsed document can be intentionally collapsed to show just the level of headings you are interested in. OOP 3, however, goes this one better by putting the outline level headings in a left drawer, which makes it cake-simple to navigate from here to there, no matter what state of collapse or expansion the entire document is in.
And oh yes, there's more yet. OOP 3 supports styles which allow you to merge many visual features and apply them to new information. Along these lines, you can actually save your document as a template, which means the document is a style, sort of. You like? I thought you might.
Most notably, OOP 3's ability to put just about anything in an outline item leads one almost immediately to think of some very cool uses for it. For instance, the document at right was initially thought up as a test to beat the unicode support about a bit... but before long, I had videos of our martial arts patterns, photos of my students and the school patch and more dropped in where they seemed to want to belong. I think a very neat document that actually contains live demonstrations of each pattern and technique directly associated with where that technique or pattern lands in our curriculum would not only be practical, it would be fairly easy to construct. Really, that's a rousing tribute to the solid design that underlies the application. That's the good news. The bad news is, now I have to think about putting a Mac in our training hall...
You probably won't have many opportunities to fold unicode, animations, scripts, movies, checklists, numeric summaries, still images, speech and audio recordings into one document for print or presentation purposes — but it certainly is nice to know that if you did, OOP 3 would handle it with grace.
You know what? This is really the kind of software that makes Mac owners smug. Lucky us!
And... yes, I know it is traditional to find something wrong, just so there will be a swinging counterpoint in a software or hardware review. Well, I tried. Really, I did. I just couldn't find anything that was broken, or even worked "less than well." And truly, I beat the heck out of it trying to break it.
OmniOutliner is $39.95 to $69.95 (pro version as described here.)
Five out of five stars.
Link: OmniOutliner
8.7.11 - Omniweb 5.5
Omniweb is a great web browser; it has features and usability that Firefox, Safari and Explorer can't touch. This is the king of Mac browsers, hands down. Having said that, there are some serious problems.
Omniweb's approach to tabs is, in my opinion, optimal. Tabs contain thumbnails of the web page they are set to. You can drag them to re-order them, and basically treat them just like they were supposed to be useful. Firefox, with additional extras, still doesn't do as well, and nothing else is even close. Omniweb's security and ad blocking is superb. You can block ads, of course, but you can block any other specific thing you like, including flash (the relief I feel at being free of flash animations can hardly be described... it's like having a baby shriek for hours, days on end, only to suddenly be muzzled, with predjudice.) Omniweb's form autocomplete is excellent, as is its ability to set site-by-site preferences. Omniweb uses the Mac keychain to remember your passwords and ids, which means that you have good security for them and that it can transfer them easily when you get a new version of Omniweb. It can save multi-page browsing sessions, filter your bookmarks... the list of useful features is quite long and I can highly, highly, recommend this browser as of version five.
But... you should know about the problems. Omniweb has huge memory consumption when dealing with Java based pages such as Digg and flickr.com. I'll be working away, about 200 megs of my 1 gig of ram used, edit a set on flickr or open comments on digg, and all of a sudden another 600 megs (!!!) is in use, my mac has slowed to a crawl, and even quitting omniweb is an exercise in frustration. So as soon as you see it eat a bunch of memory, quit. That'll save a lot of time and frustration
Also, Omniweb is probably the most single-minded application I own. If you open another tab, even in the background, it'll sleep; the spinning beach ball is your constant companion. I assume they'll gt after these two problems eventually. I've reported both. Updates to Omniweb are very few and far between, however, so be aware of that if you're considering buying it.
Omniweb is about $25.00, US.
Five out of five stars because I can't imagine anyone doing any better in features.
Link: Omniweb
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