Suggested OmniGraffle Improvements

Omni,

Here are some suggestions for improving OmniGraffle from a group of wireframing power users:

TOP PRIORITIES ----------------------------

Do not force user to click in/activate drawing frame before using hand tool (by holding down the spacebar). Holding down the spacebar should change tool to hand and then use tool when clicked in drawing frame. Tool should not care about modal difference of activated frame, because it will always be used in the canvas frame only.

Allow the ability to scroll past the edge of the canvas (into the gray area), so I can center elements in my window that are at the edge of the canvas, and also allow me to store objects off-screen for later use.

There should be a way to click to objects behind the top object, say by holding down the command key and then clicking to cycle through the stack of items as selections (as a suggestion). I believe illustrator uses a method like this.

Option-shift dragging should consistently make a duplicate and constrain the drag direction of whatever object/group is clicked. Currently it sometimes constrains the drag direction but other times not.

Do not change weight/face of font when selecting new font size for text object (object selected). (For example, currently sometimes fonts will switch from Regular to Bold in an object with mixed font weights.)

Key command for grouping/ungrouping (command-G, command-shift-G as a suggestion)

MEDIUM PRIORITIES ----------------------------

Ability to name favorite object settings, and ability to manage them in some sort of pallette outside of menu window. It gets very tiresome to scroll to the bottom of a very long list of styles every time I need to add or delete a style. My stencil has probably 50 (small) objects in it.

Clear (not filled) objects should only be selectable if their contents or border is clicked. A clear box with a border (to outline a group of objects), for example, should not bar a user from selecting objects under the clear part. That is, the box should be treated like a line, rather than as a filled object, because it is not filled with a color.

If an object is selected and a color selector is open, then changing the color should change the corresponding characteristic of the object. Currently this only happens if the color selector button has been clicked immediately prior. However, the current behavior should change so that if the color selector is left open after one object has been changed, and then a second object is selected, then the color selector should update to the color (fill or border) of the object selected and when a new color is selected the second object should change colors (instead of having to first click the color selector button again). Color selectors should be labelled as to whether they are selecting fill or border color, or better yet, a new selector should be designed to handle both in one dialogue.

You should be able to open and edit stencil files.

You should be able to scale when printing (to a % and to match page size). Currently I'm forced to export to PDF first.

There needs to be an option for a shorter-dash line (dashes closer together) and a dotted line.

Selecting a lines is difficult.

NICE TO HAVES ----------------------------

Leading for text should follow design standards and be measured from the baseline UP to the next baseline, instead of baseline down. Measuring it up would mean that adding leading would move a line of text down instead of pushing text below it down.

Text boxes should be rectangular, not oval, and should default to top/left aligned like regular handwriting. Currently, edges of ovals can overlap and obscure other objects close to the text field.

Thanks!