Outliner Showdown: OmniOutliner Pro vs. Tree

I remember my teachers always harping about us needing to create outlines before we started in on reports in school. I had it in my head that I was a good enough writer and that I could just sit down and go to town and I’d pump out a great piece of writing. About halfway through, I’d realize that I had meandered off-course and had no idea where my report was going. Then I’d tell myself that I should’ve created an outline. Even in today’s world of advanced text editors and word processors, outlines are still a necessary evil (or joy, depending on how you look at it.) In my efforts to write more and better , I’ve found that I have to create an outline for anything more than 500 words. Unless it’s me ranting about something, an outline is going to make my words more coherent. I took a look at two outliners. In the blue corner is the reigning heavyweight champion, OmniOutliner Pro. In the red corner is a fresh lightweight, Tree. Each have their strengths, and weaknesses. OmniOutliner Pro 3 is a powerful outliner. Version 3 brought many new features that put it out in front of the outliner pack. OmniOutliner 3 lets you add file attachments to your outlines. You can add photos, videos, links, clickable email addresses and in the pro version you can record audio directly into outlines from the menu bar. OmniOutliner lets you add multiple columns to your outline. You can add as many as you need to make your outline work as you need it to. And similar to Omnifocus, there’s a clipping service (currently not available in the MAS version, but installing the demo from the Omnigroup Web site seemed to circumvent that for me) so that you can grab data from other applications and throw them into an outline. For me, one of the biggest advantages that OmniOutliner has is its ability to mix file attachments with outline text. It’s extremely handy to throw screenshots you intend to use in a review directly into the outline that you’re working on. You can get a rough idea of what the flow of the review is going to be, images and all. If you’re doing an outline for business, OmniOutliner can let you add contact details to outlines so you can easily see (and get ahold of) people who are in charge of different things represented in your outline. And the ability to record audio is a huge addition to note-taking. I used OmniOutliner years ago in college for note-taking, but if I had been able to record the audio from my professor’s lectures and add my own notes to them along the way, that would’ve been amazing. Imagine going back through your notes and anytime you don’t quite know what your note is referring to, you could listen back to the audio and quickly find out. If you’re worried that audio files will start eating up your hard disk, OmniOutliner lets you tweak the compression of the audio files from Apple lossless all the way down to whatever the worst sounding thing could possibly be. A lot of iPad apps have attempted to do similar things, but having the ability to adjust audio quality, have a real keyboard, and have a fully featured outliner beats a silly iPad app with a notebook paper-stylized UI any day. Unlike every other outliner I’ve used before, OmniOutliner Pro 3 lets you create multiple columns in your outline. You can designate them as different types of content too. You can tell OmniOutliner that the column will be used for checkboxes, rich text, dates or currency. Telling OmniOutliner what will be in the column will then make it easier to work with the data later and sort it. In a lot of ways, OmniOutliner Pro has replaced Numbers for me. I used to use Numbers to make schedules and draft budgets, but OmniOutliner Pro does the mostly the same things. Another nifty feature of OmniOutliner is its clippings function. The clippings service allows you to take links, text, and photos from another application and import it into your outline. If you’re using OmniOutliner as a note-taking tool or researching a large project and want to organize your data as you go along, using the clipping service is a great way to collect research information and have it all in one place, ready to be reference when you start writing a first draft. OmniOutliner has a default clippings template, but you can create different layouts to suit whatever project you’re working on. My only complaints about OmniOutliner Pro is that sometimes the sheer power of the application is overwhelming. There’s so much stuff to tinker with that sometimes you might spend more time adjusting settings than working on your actual outline. My advice to tinkerers would be to create templates for different types of outlines you’ll want to create. I’ve created a class schedule for one of my schools, and while it’s pretty basic in style, I saved it as a template so I can go in and make changes as they arise and I can even filter out checked off days so I can print fresh schedules throughout the month that include changes but exclude past days that I don’t need to see anymore. The other outliner I looked at was Tree from Top of Tree . If OmniOutliner Pro is a the power user’s outliner, Tree is the everyman’s outliner. It’s a clean, simple, and easy to use outliner. I found myself taking to Tree faster than I did to OmniOutliner Pro. The UI feels a bit more modern, it has a menu bar button for quickly adding color labels to items and the keyboard commands felt a little more natural. The basics of OmniOutliner’s inspector tab, like labels, colors, and fonts are right in the toolbar in Tree. Things like file attachments, multi-column outlines and a clipping service are all missing from Tree though. At first I didn’t think it would be a big deal, but after having them in OmniOutliner Pro, I really missed them in Tree. Tree is very simple, and for a lot of people who just want a basic text-only outliner, Tree will do the job. If text-only is a problem for you though, you might want to pass on tree. The biggest selling point of Tree is its “tree-like” branching outline mode. While Tree has a normal vertical outline mode, it has an interesting horizontal tree mode as well. When you invoke tree mode, Tree starts looking a lot like a mind-mapping application. You get to see how your outline spreads out and it takes on a much different shape than a standard outline. I think the best way to use tree mode is to write out your outline in the standard mode, and then switch to tree mode to view and edit. From tree mode, it’s very comfortable to drag parts around and adding color labels helps a lot as well. While Tree is a good outliner, it doesn’t have the power features that OmniOutliner Pro has. If you want to add files, columns or use its clipping service, OmniOutliner Pro is your best bet. If you’re a more visual person in the way you think, you might get a lot of use out of Tree’s “tree” mode. I myself prefer OmniOutliner Pro in most cases, but for creative projects, I’ve found that visualizing where a story’s going and how it’s spreading out from the opening scene helps me get a better idea of how it’s going to play out.

You can listen to Outliner Showdown: OmniOutliner Pro vs. Tree online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Outliner Showdown: OmniOutliner Pro vs. Tree is an episode from Kernel Panic.

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This episode was published on Oct 14, 2011.

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