Outliner for iPhone and iPad

Outliner is actually a really nice, simple app. To quote is intended function from the developers site:

"CarbonFin Outliner and Outliner for iPad allow you to organize your thoughts, tasks, and projects. Easily create a todo list for today, or track an entire project anywhere you are. Share your outlines, edit your outlines online with the free Outliner Online, and collaborate with other Outliner users"

I tried to use it to track pupil progress (from a Driving Instructor point of view) and it did a nice job. Especially on the iPad where you have the screen real estate and (compared to my iPhone 4) the processing power to keep it running quickly. To be honest I probably find it more effective than using a spredsheet as Numbers can get fiddly and laggy when there's a lot of information to process.








Draft Pupil Examples Created for Testing

So as you can see from the image to the right, Outliner has a clean UI. I filled out some pupil names and created all the sub headings I need to track pupil learning progress on.

Some of the key points I really like about Outerliner are as follows:

• Ability to create a list like those shown to the right and save it as "template" then duplicate the template and rename. For me this is essential with an app of this nature. I dont want to be manually creating each pupil progress list or any other check list that will be repeated as part of my day job. 
• I can place notes against any part of the list, even against the check box items I've created.
• The check boxes are great for me to track progress and if you look at the Parallel Park item I created, next to the words Parallel Park is a little circle, as you tick the check boxes this circle proportionatly fills up. SO at a glance progress can been seen without having to fully expand everything.
• Outliner syncs with Dropbox. Again essential for backup of data really.

Theses are just a few of the good points that for me are essential. Outliner is a flexible tool which makes it really easy to use for more than just tracking pupil progress. In fact, I think if it had the ability to sound reminder alarms it would really start to challenge some of the todo managament apps out there. It's easy to use outliner as a project and checklist manager. As you can see from the top of the above image, this is my Student Progress list. You can have multiple lists in the Main Menu (from the Outliner button on the top left) so you could have a shopping list for exmaple.

 

As I mentioned earlier, I find Outliner can be a bit slow to update on my iPhone 4, mainly when it comes to ticking the check boxes. This is probably due to the volume of the check boxes I have but at the end of the day, it's still a negative point.

A futher negative point is the positioning of the expand/collapes arrow and the completion tracking circle next to each item. If you tap on the circle you get a pop up offering to check or uncheck all. Again this is not as bad on the iPad with exrta screen space but I could see this potentially being annoying for people with bigger fingers/hands.

So overall for me, Outliner is a good tool that did more than expected. The developer is responsive to. So if you are looking to track the progress of a project, checklist, shopping list or a students leaning as I did or maybe even plan you're next novel, Outliner is a great app for the job.

Based on my experience, I'm happily scoring Outliner 4.5/5.