Cloud Outliner - Outline Maker 4+

UPDATE for 2.3 - slight usability tweaks and improved syncing.

UPDATE for 2.1 - I raised my rating from 3 to 4 stars. The update has made the program more stable. The crashes from right clicks on outline points seesm to be fixed.

I’ve been using Cloud Outliner 2 on my iPad since September, and while it works well, it is harder to copy and paste and move things on the iPad than on a Mac, so I’ve been anxiously waiting for Cloud Outliner 2 to come out on the Mac. I’ve installed it and all my outlines from my iPad instantly synced without a problem. I’ve found three glitches so far after 2 weeks. if you have the cursor on the right side over or in an outline point, the cursor will not scroll from the trackpad. You can scroll via the scroll bar on the far right, but not with a normal trackpad scroll. The most frustrating glitch is that it is often extremely difficult or impossible to select text within an item in an outline to edit it. The third glitch is much more serious and warrented me downgrading the app to 3 stars. It crashes often, mostly when right clicking on an outline point. It crashes as soon as you do the right click. I’m on a 2014 version retina iMac.

I think this is a well designed, intuititive program. It allows you to dump and organize your thoughts, easily create hierarchy, search, and show/hide checked/unchecked. HOWEVER, I think it is not honest that not only can’t this program print, but they don’t disclose this. You go to print and the menu flashes but nothing happens. I was surprised when I needed to take something with me and realized that you can’t print at all. I needed to save as PDF and print the PDF. When I emailed support twice, and both times they responded within three days. The first answer was: "Print feature doesn't work as essential on some devices. We are trying to find out why. Please, sorry for the temporary inconveniences.” I emailed a month later asking for an update, thinking that they would be working on it and was told it still isn’t fixed “for now.” Now I see this has been an issue for months. It isn’t “for now,” it just doesn’t work and should be disclosed - at least so users won’t think they are crazy and wonder why nothing is printing. It would save time to just tell us - “this program is for those who do not need to print” or that there is a workaround. If you don’t need to print it is 4-5 stars. Only other quibble is that the formating fonts selections are different on the Format menu than on right-click and strike through is only available on the menu and outline is only available on right-click.

I have been using Cloud Outliner Pro for just over a month on various projects and find it exceedingly useful. However, there are a few of flaws: One is that the page does not automatically move up as it fills, so the new line is below the bottom of the visible page and out of sight: I have to move the page up manually to see it. Two, if I have several sub lines under a lead line, and I want to add another sub line, the new subline goes all the way down to the bottom of the page; I have to move and place it manually. Third, in order to add/edit a line I have to first select it, then double click on it for a cursor to appear. Hence the 4 star rating.