OmniOutliner is, as its name suggests, an outline creation application. Okay, so on the surface, something as mundane as an outliner doesn’t seem like anything too exciting. Then again, OnmiOutliner isn’t just a plain outliner. It’s quite possibly one of the most flexible idea organizers on the Mac--or any platform for that matter. Note that this review discusses the standard version of OmniOutliner, as opposed to the professional version. To compare the differences between the two, read The Omni Group’s OmniOutliner Pro 3.5 page.

Like other OmniGroup applications, OmniOutliner is an excellent example of a Mac UI done right. The interface itself is simple and straightforward:

In fact, at first glance the power of OmniOutliner seems tucked away. However, it is fairly easy to discover features. For example, the “Inspect” button brings up the inspector palette, which is what you’ll use for most document formatting. “Add Column” is pretty self-explanatory. And, of course, the Action menu gives quick access to many common tasks. the “Utilities” button is a little misleading, however; all it does it bring up the search drawer.

OnmiOutliner has many of the expected outliner features: adding and subtracting rows, indentation, and so on. Where OmniOutliner really shines is in document flexibility. With OmniOutliner, you can give rows columns, and cells different color backgrounds (or even background images). There are practical uses to this; for example, highlighting certain cells, rows, or columns. But you can make some simply good looking documents in OmniOutliner. The “Welcome" document that opens when you first run OmniOutliner is a good example of OmniOutliner’s flexibility.

There is a bug that prevents changing the column header text, so if you use a dark background, you may have trouble trying to read the header text color.

What? You only do a particular task with OmniOutliner and would like new documents’ formatting to be different? No problem; you can change the layout that new documents use via the “Edit new document template” button in General Preferences. This customizability extends to other areas; for example, you can change the behavior of certain keyboard shortcuts as well.

One good use of OmniOutliner would be for a checklist for a project. What makes OmniOutliner an ideal application for such a use is the fact that you can attach files to OmniOutliner documents. Linkls to attached documents are placed inline. A double-click of the document icon opens it. It’s really a very thoughtful addition.

Another great time-saver is the ability to export an OmniOutliner document to Keynote. OmniOutliner will take the outline and turn it into a presentation. Exporting to Keynote is seamless and problem-free. By default, exported documents use the Keynote Chalkboard theme, but you can use any Keynote theme. Also, you can choose the layout that you want OmniOutliner to export the slides as. OmniOutliner also exports to rich and plain text, OPML, HTML, older OmniOutliner formats, and OmniOutliner template.

It’s rare that I have no real complaints about an application. OmniOutliner is one of those rare apps. It’s plenty flexible, fast, and very Mac-like (of course, that’s a given for an OmniGroup product). A couple of quibbles aside, OmniOutliner 3.5 is near perfect; it’s close enough to perfect to receive a perfect score. Well done, OmniGroup!