Bicycle For Your Mind
Review of Outlinely
(Originally posted on 2014-12-08)
Outlinely is an interesting mashup between an outliner and a text editor.
Using an Outliner
There are people who love thinking in mind-maps, others love thinking in outlines, and then there are those who love thinking in a hybrid solution of mind-maps and outlines. If you are a person who is into lists or who loves thinking through things in a hierarchy, you probably need an outliner. And no, Microsoft Word’s outline mode doesn’t cut it.
This is a very competitive category in the Mac software space. The 800 pound gorilla in this space is OmniOutliner. It is available in a standard ($49.99) and pro version ($99.99). If you are into outlines and rely on them to think things through, you should get OmniOutliner. It is the best product in the marketplace.
If you are not sure about outlines, or not sure about spending that kind of money on an outlining program, Outlinely is a great alternative. It is a basic outliner, but it does the basics very well.
Outlinely to conquer outlines
You are going to be happy using Outlinely for your outlining needs. The product is well designed, it is simple and has a good help file which runs you through all the things you can do with it, and how to do it. I am not going to give you a rundown through its features except to say that you will find in it everything that you really need to work in outlines.
I am going to highlight two features I particularly liked.
Mark things done
If you have a list of things to do. ⌘ + D will mark it done.
Focus Mode
If your outline is long and complicated and you are getting distracted staring at all the stuff you have already written you can apply focus mode (⌘ + enter) to just concentrate on the section you are interested in. Hit the esc key to get out of focus mode. Useful when you need to concentrate on certain sections of the document and you want the other stuff out of the way.
Conclusions
Outlinely is an elegant, well-designed solution for your outlining needs. It has all the features you need and is an excellent outlining application.
Recommended most heartily.
macosxguru at the gmail thingie