Both the calculate winners and delete actions benefit from some kind of
hint.
The "calculate winners" hint informs administrators that results won't
be publicly available unless the "show results" option is enabled.
The delete action was redirecting with an error message when the budget
couldn't be deleted; IMHO it's better to disable it and inform
administrators why it's disabled. Alternatively we could remove the
button completely; however, users might be looking for a way to delete a
budget and wouldn't find any hint about it.
We're now removing the "Delete" action from the budgets index table,
since most of the time it isn't possible to delete a budget and so the
action takes up space and we get little gain in return. We could keep
the "Delete" icon just for budgets which can be deleted; however, the
alignment of the table rows would suffer, making it harder to find the
intended action.
We currently don't have any links in the public area pointing to past
budgets, so having links in the admin section to both the budget and its
results seemed a bit redundant. We're going to add more links to the
budget actions soon, so we need to make room for them; otherwise we'll
have too many.
We're also changing the "Preview" text for a published budget. Since the
budget is already public, we aren't previewing it anymore but simply
viewing it.
And, to be consistent with the "See results" link, we're opening the
"Preview" link in the current tab. Opening links in a new tab is
generally a bad idea because takes control away from users, breaks the
back button and makes navigation particularly hard on mobile browsers.
It could be argued that in this case it's useful when users are editing
the budget in one tab and previewing it in another one, so we might add
this behavior back as long as we make it clear that the link opens in a
new tab [1].
[1] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/new-browser-windows-and-tabs/
Calculating winners before the balloting is over is useless (results
aren't published at that point) and can lead to the wrong results since
users are still voting and results might change.
And we were showing the button to calculate winners even when a budget
had finished. However, in this case the action to calculate winners did
nothing, which resulted in administrators seeing nothing happened after
pressing the button.
Before, users needed to navigate to the list of groups in order to
add, edit or delete a group.
Also, they need to navigate to the list of groups first, and then to
the list of headings for that group in order to add, edit or delete a
heading.
Now, it's possible to do all these actions for any group or heading
from the participatory budget view to bring simplicity and to reduce
the number of clicks from a user perspective.
Co-Authored-By: Javi Martín <javim@elretirao.net>
In the past it would have been confusing to add a way to directly
enable/disable a phase in the phases table because it was in the middle
of the form. So we would have had next to each other controls that don't
do anything until the form is sent and controls which modify the
database immediately. That's why we couldn't add the checkboxes we used
when using the wizard.
Now the phases aren't on the same page as the budget form, so we can
edit them independently. We're using a switch, so it's consistent with
the way we enable/disable features. We could have used checkboxes, but
with checkboxes, users expect they aren't changing anything until they
click on a button to send the form, so we'd have to add a button, and it
might be missed since we're going to add "buttons" for headings and
groups to this page which won't send a form but will be links.
Since we're changing the element with JavaScript after an AJAX call, we
need a way to find the button we're changing. The easiest way is adding
an ID attribute to all admin actions buttons/links.
Having links in the middle of a form distracts users from the task of
filling in the form, and following a link before submitting the form
will mean whatever has been filled in is lost.
And the budgets form is already very long and hard to fill in. Having
the phases table in the middle of it made it even harder. And, since
we're planning to add the option to manage groups and headings from the
same page, it's better to have a dedicated page for the form.
Since we aren't very consistent in the styles for submit buttons in the
admin section, it was possible to accidentally press the "Calculate
Winner Investments" link after filling in the form. This wouldn't submit
the form and so the changes wouldn't be saved.
It's also a bit confusing for users. After filling in a form, users
expect a submit button. When finding two buttons, they've got to stop to
think which one is the one they've got to press.
Furthermore, the "Calculate Winner Investments" link would work better
as a button instead of a link, for the reasons mentioned in commit
5311daadf. Since HTML forms can't be nested, that would mean treating
this button in a different way than the rest of the buttons in the
application.
Moving the link before the form solves the issue.
Since now we've got the budget actions before the budget form, we're
grouping these actions together with the "Preview" action. We're not
adding the "Publish budget" button as well to this group because it's
got an associated message.
We were executing SQL queries searching for translations even for
records which were not persisted in the database and therefore had no
translations.
So we're now only looking for translations when the record is persisted.
Note that, when the record isn't persisted, we're using `I18n.translate`
instead of the `t` method. That's because the `t` method would also
perform database queries since we overwrite the `t` method in the
`i18n_translation` initializer.
On tabs with many records, like the proposals tab, requests are now up
to three times faster on production environments.
Tests related to this part of the application were failing sometimes
because requests took longer than `Capybara.default_max_wait_time`.
After these changes, the custom information texts pages load about 30%
faster when running the tests.
This way it's easier to test; changing it will also be easier.
During my experiments I made a mistake which wasn't covered by the test
suite. We're adding a test for this case.
Note we're using `i18n_content` in the component instead of `content`
because there's already a `content` method provided by ViewComponent.
Having to wait for a whole page refresh after updating each setting was
painful when modifying several settings.
Even though the navigation is updated immediately to reflect which
sections have been enabled/disabled, there's one gotcha. Changing the
"SDG" setting will not update the user menu (which contains a link to
SDG content) nor the "SDG Configuration" tab; refreshing the page will
be necessary to check these changes. The same happens with the map and
remote census tabs. So in these cases we're making an exception and
sending the form. We might find a better solution in the future.
For this reason, we aren't using the `switch` ARIA role. Some users
might not expect a switch control to refresh the page, just like they
usually don't expect checkboxes to refresh the page. Furthermore, screen
reader support for the `switch` role seems to be inconsistent. For
instance, NVDA with Chrome announces the control as a checkbox instead
of a switch.
Note AJAX is only used for feature settings. Other settings are still
updated with regular HTTP requests.
Since we're now using AJAX requests, we have to make sure to add an
expectation in the homepage tests in order to make sure the request has
finished before starting a new one.
We were using buttons with the "Enable" and "Disable" texts to
enable/disable settings. However, when machine learning settings were
introduced in commit 4d27bbeba, a switch control was introduced to
enable/disable them.
In order to keep the interface consistent, we're now using switch
controls in other sections where settings are enabled/disabled. We can
even use the same code in the machine learning settings as well.
We're also removing the confirmation dialog to enable/disable a setting,
since the dialog is really annoying when changing several settings and
this action can be undone immediately. The only setting which might need
a confirmation is the "Skip user verification" one; we might add it in
the future. Removing the confirmation here doesn't make things worse,
though; the "Are you sure?" confirmation dialog was also pretty useless
and users would most likely blindly accept it.
Note Capybara doesn't support finding a button by its `aria-labelledby`
atrribute. Ideally we'd write `click_button "Participatory budgeting"`
instead of `click_button "Yes"`, since from the user's point of view the
"Yes" or "No" texts aren't button labels but indicators of the status of
the setting. This makes the code a little brittle since tests would pass
even if the element referenced by `aria-labelledby` didn't exist.
There were duplicate IDs and the `lines` attribute doesn't do anything
for textareas (I guess it was accidentally used instead of the `rows`
attribute; I'm just removing it so the page looks the same way it did
until now).
Even though the `value` field didn't generate duplicate IDs, we're also
changing it because we usually set an element with the `dom_id` of a
record when it contains the whole information about a record, and not
just one piece of it. For instance, in some places we assign this ID to
the table row related to the record.
By default, Rails disables submit inputs (<input type="submit">) when
they're pressed so we avoid a double-submission when users click the
button twice.
However, Rails does not disable submit buttons (<button type="submit">)
when they're pressed. This means there's a chance users might press the
button several times. Even if most our table actions are idempotent, it
might cause certain issues. For instance, pressing the "Delete" button
twice means the second request might raise an
`ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound` exception.
Disabling the button also gives feedback to users, letting them know
they've correctly clicked the button.
Links acting like buttons have a few disadvantages.
First, screen readers will announce them as "links". Screen reader users
usually associate links with "things that get you somewhere" and buttons
with "things that perform an action". So when something like "Delete,
link" is announced, they'll probably think this is a link which will
take them to another page where they can delete a record.
Furthermore, the URL of the link for the "destroy" action might be the
same as the URL for the "show" action (only one is accessed with a
DELETE request and the other one with a GET request). That means screen
readers could announce the link like "Delete, visited link", which is
very confusing.
They also won't work when opening links in a new tab, since opening
links in a new tab always results in a GET request to the URL the link
points to.
Finally, submit buttons work without JavaScript enabled, so they'll work
even if the JavaScript in the page hasn't loaded (for whatever reason).
For all these reasons (and probably many more), using a button to send
forms is IMHO superior to using links.
There's one disadvantage, though. Using `button_to` we create a <form>
tag, which means we'll generate invalid HTML if the table is inside
another form. If we run into this issue, we need to use `button_tag`
with a `form` attribute and then generate a form somewhere else inside
the HTML (with `content_for`).
Note we're using `button_to` with a block so it generates a <button>
tag. Using it in a different way the text would result in an <input />
tag, and input elements can't have pseudocontent added via CSS.
The following code could be a starting point to use the `button_tag`
with a `form` attribute. One advantage of this approach is screen
readers wouldn't announce "leaving form" while navigating through these
buttons. However, it doesn't work in Internet Explorer.
```
ERB:
<% content_for(:hidden_content, form_tag(path, form_options) {}) %>
<%= button_tag text, button_options %>
Ruby:
def form_id
path.gsub("/", "_")
end
def form_options
{ id: form_id, method: options[:method] }
end
def button_options
html_options.except(:method).merge(form: form_id)
end
Layout:
<%= content_for :hidden_content %> # Right before the `</body>`
```
The message "Are you sure?" is usually followed by blindly clicking
"Yes" without really thinking about what one is doing. So we're
including a bit more information about what's about to happen. That way
it's more likely users will notice it when they accidentally click the
wrong button.
Ideally we would offer the option to undo every common action and then
we wouldn't have to ask for confirmation. But since that isn't the case,
for now we're adding a better confirmation message.
Note we're removing the `resource_name` parameter from the translation
to confirm the action of deleting a record. The reason is, in many
languages it only makes sense to add the model name when it's got an
associated article, and, unlike in English (where "the" is used for
every word), that article is different depending on the noun it's
related to. So we'd have to provide a translation like "name with
article, when singular" for every model.
The complexity of these translations could scalate quickly. And, given
the context, IMHO it isn't essential to add the resouce name. When we're
in the proposals index and there's a proposal named "Improve XYZ", and
we click on "Delete" and see a message saying "This action will delete
XYZ", it is implied that XYZ is a proposal.
So instead we're changing the message so it works for every record with
no need of noun-dependent articles.
This way screen reader users will know which record they're going to
access when focusing on a link to a certain action. Otherwise they'd
hear something like "Edit, link", and they wouldn't know which record
they'll end up editing if they follow the link.
This way it will be easier to change the behavior of all table actions,
like adding ARIA attributes. In the past, when we changed the behavior
of the `link_to` method, we had to change all table action classes.
Note we're using the `call` method (which is equivalent to adding an ERB
file) because we were getting an error calling `render` from the `dates`
method:
```
ActionView::Base#lookup_context delegated to
view_renderer.lookup_context, but view_renderer is nil:
```
It might be because we aren't rendering the
`Adming::Budgets::DurationComponent` but just calling one method, and so
there's no view context in this case.
The imageable/documentable object is always the object the form builder
is based on; since we're already passing the form builder, we don't have
to pass the object as well.
The only exception are the poll answers. In this case, we're passing a
new answer as the object. That's OK; the same hack that we're using to
send the data to the answer URL without displaying existing attachments
causes the form to keep working the same way.
As mentioned in commit 5214d89c8, using a `<select>` tag which
automatically submits a form on change has a few accessibility issues,
particularly for keyboard users who might accidentally submit the form
while browsing the options.
So we're adding a submit button and removing the "submit on change"
behavior.
Note that, while `<select>` tags have their own usability issues,
alternatives in this case are not obvious because the number of existing
polls could be very low (zero, for instance) or very high (dozens, if
the application has been used for years).
I thought of using a `<datalist>` tag with a regular text input. The
problem here is we don't want to send the name of the poll to the server
(as we would with a `<datalist>` tag); we want to send the ID of the
poll.
Maybe we could add an automplete field instead, providing a similar
funcionality. However, for now we're keeping it simple. This poll
questions page isn't even accessible through the admin menu since commit
83e8d603, so right now anything we change here will be pretty much
useless.
When we see a list of, let's say, banners, and each one has a link to
edit them, the word "banner" in the text "edit banner" is redundant and
adds noise; even for users with cognitive disabilities, it's obvious
that the "edit" link refers to the banner.
In commit 9794ffbbf, we replaced "buttons" with icons in order to make
the admin interface consistent with the planned budget investments
redesign.
However, using icons has some issues. For once, icons like a trash for
the "delete" action might be obvious, but other icons like "confirm
moderation" or "send pending" might be a bit confusing.
It's true that we were adding tooltips on hover. We tried two
approaches: using Foundation's tooltips and using CSS tooltips.
Foundation tooltips are not activated on focus (only on hover), while
CSS tooltips always appear below the icon, which might be a problem when
the icons are at the bottom of the screen (one of our milestone tests
was failing because of that and we can now run it with JavaScript
enabled).
Both Foundation and CSS tooltips have other issues:
* They force users to make an extra step and move the mouse over the
link just to know what the link is about
* They aren't available on touch screens, so these users will have to
memorize what each icon does
* They are not hoverable, and making them hoverable would cause a
different issue because the tooltip might cover links below it, making
it impossible to click these links without moving the mouse away
first
* They are not dismissable, which is considered an accessibility issue
and a requirement in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines [1]
For all these reasons, we're using both texts and icons. As Thomas
Byttebier said "The best icon is a text label [2]". Heydon Pickering
also makes a point towards providing text alongside icons in his book
"Inclusive Components" [3].
Note that, since we're now adding text and some of the colors we use for
actions are hard to read against a white/gray background, we're making a
few colors darker.
With these changes, actions take more space in the admin table compared
to the space they took in version 1.3, but they are more usable and
accessible while they still take less space than they did in version
1.2.
[1] https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/content-on-hover-or-focus
[2] https://thomasbyttebier.be/blog/the-best-icon-is-a-text-label
[3] https://inclusive-components.design/tooltips-toggletips/
- Allow to define a link (text and url) on budget form for render on the budget
header.
- Improve styles
Co-authored-by: Senén Rodero Rodríguez <senenrodero@gmail.com>
When users created a budget and made a typo, they could use the link to
go back to edit a budget. However, after doing so, they were out of the
budget creation process.
So we're now letting users go back to edit the budget, fix any mistakes
they might have made, and then continue to groups.
So now there's no need to edit each phase individually to enable/disable
them.
We aren't doing the same thing in the form to edit a budget because we
aren't sure about possible usability issues. On one hand, in some tables
we automatically update records when we mark a checkbox, so users might
expect that. On the other hand, having a checkbox in the middle of a
form which updates the database automatically is counter-intuitive,
particularly when right below that table there are other checkboxes
which don't update the database until the form is submitted.
So, either way, chances are users would think they've updated the phases
(or kept them intact) while the opposite would be true.
In the form within the wizard to create a budget that problem isn't that
important because there aren't any other fields in the form and it's
pretty intuitive that what users do will have no effect until they press
the "Finish" button.
Co-Authored-By: Julian Nicolas Herrero <microweb10@gmail.com>
