An OmniOutliner 3 beta has been released. I won't go over all the features, as they're… outlined so beautifully on the page I linked to. The current beta is only the "standard" version, but I'm looking forward to the "pro" version as well, with named styles, audio recordings and other features!
I thought the application looked great from the screenshots at MacNN and the product page, but in using it… it's just… wow. It's leaps and bounds ahead of OmniOutliner 2! You can add different column types (pop-up lists, checkboxes, numbers, dates), have inline notes, apply styles to different parts of the document (more on that later) and probably tons of other things I haven't even seen yet.
Being totally and utterly anally retentive, I keep a document with all of the things I purchase on my credit card, and note when I pay off items and the amounts. Currently this is done using iNotepad, which is… cumbersome. I created a new document in OO3, added a couple of columns and the proper formatting and it was done! I also played around with some styles. I enabled the "styles view", which brought up a weird bunch of "dashed" checkboxes (some funky subclassing of the NSOutlineView cells, I suspect!). Hovering over the checkboxes brings up a translucent bubble (again, funky subclassing!) which provides a description of what clicking the checkbox will do. One of such checkboxes affects "all level 2 rows", which I clicked. Changing the background colour in the "Appearance" palette then changes all of the backgrounds of the indented rows! Nice.
Here's a screenshot of what it looks like, after doing all that:
I would have to disagree with you, to a point.
It is a powerful app but I was confused with it rapidly. Different styles for standard objects (NSTableColumn’s) and weird highlighting kinda threw me off immediately. I continued to try it for over an hour and I was still having issues doing simple tasks. Some things like the small icon in the gutter on the left don’t do anything sensible, like it switches from add a row to collapse. So how is it obvious to add a row again?
I will try it again once it is complete, hopefully soon.
The small icon in the gutter is meant for “inline comments”. Click on it the first time, and you’ll get an indented comment that is attached to the original row. (This is akin to the second part of the window in OO2.)
To add a new row, just click on the new row toolbar item, or hit return.
I can see some of the interface becoming confusing, though. I, for one, don’t get the idea of “hoisting”.