New discovery for Mac

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Posted by MadaboutDana
Jul 29, 2014 at 09:26 AM

Just discovered a very nice outlining and writing tool, OutlineEdit (again, produced by a German programmer, I believe). Available from the Mac App Store for a fairly modest sum. Has a splendid range of features – minimalist in style, but including things like notes, checkboxes, rich text and so on.

Cheers,
Bill

Posted by MadaboutDana
Jul 29, 2014 at 09:56 AM

Actually, it doesn’t really do rich text, but it does do notes. And has a very nice web clipping feature. Plus, you can add ‘categories’ to any item in the outline, which changes their colour. Interesting idea, although currently you can’t ‘assemble’ categories (I assume the developer’s probably aiming to do that at some point, however). The search function is also very good (highlights hits, counts ‘em, has simple arrows for skipping from one hit to the next/previous hit).

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jul 29, 2014 at 02:27 PM

Looks like an interesting app. One missing feature seems to be hoisting, but that isn’t a deal breaker given some of the other nice features. At $19, it’s a little pricey to pick up on spec. Have you bought it? If so, I’d welcome reading more about how you think it performs. Thank you.

Steve Z.

Posted by MadaboutDana
Jul 29, 2014 at 09:25 PM

It’s got some really nice features, including word and character counts (unusual in an outliner), plus a rather elegant little timer that tells you how long you’ve been working on a document. On the other hand, it’s got some frustrating features, too – like the ‘category’ (tag) feature, which doesn’t actually allow you to do anything with the categorised items (= outline entries) apart from colour them in different colours.

There’s a nice checkbox feature, so it’s ideal for creating a to-do list with coloured entries showing levels of urgency/priority. The folding options are powerful, as is the notes feature. The way you can arrange windows on screen is also clever – more or less unique, in fact.

On the other hand, it doesn’t yet support rich text, which is frustrating. I get the impression it’s very much a work in progress (much as Cotton Notes for iOS was when it first appeared). I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops – currently it’s unlikely to make it to the top of my favourite apps list, but that may change.

Posted by Robin
Aug 1, 2014 at 10:34 AM

Hello everyone,

I am the designer and developer of OutlineEdit.
It is great to read your feedback and opinions on version 1.0 of the application.

I am glad to announce today that implementation of rich text support has begun and that it will be added to the product with an update coming in the near future.
As you pointed out currently there is only a limited functionality of categories - this will of course change as well. I am looking into different interesting ways of advancing on this feature.
Furthermore typography and outline layout options are going to be adressed.

1.0 is only the beginning of what will become a more powerful tool.

If you are interested to be part of the OutlineEdit beta program please write to betafeedback@outlineedit.com; it is always most essential to get user opinions early on in the design process.

Best regards,

Robin

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