In the admin section, when clicking on a link that leads to a page in
the public area, sometimes the page was opened in the same window and
sometimes it would open in a new window, with no clear criteria
regarding when either scenario would take place.
This was really confusing, so now we're more consistent and open
(almost) every link in the same window. The main reason behind it is
simple: if we add `target: _blank`, people who want to open those links
in the same window can no longer do so, so we're taking control away
from them. However, if we don't add this attribute, people can choose
whether to open the link on the same tab or to open it on a new one,
since all browsers implement a method to do so.
More reasons behind this decision can be found in "Opening Links in New
Browser Windows and Tabs" [1].
We're keeping some exceptions, though:
* Opening the link to edit an investment on the same tab would result in
losing all the investment filters already applied when searching for
investments, so until we implement a way to keep these filters, we're
also opening the link to edit an investment in a new tab
* For now, we're also opening links to download files in a new window;
we'll deal with this case in the future
[1] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/new-browser-windows-and-tabs/
Out of the usability issues I've experienced when using Consul
Democracy, the biggest one has arguably been the fact that the link to
edit a proposal opens in a new tab. I guess the reasoning behind it is
that the page to edit a proposal is not part of the proposals dashboard,
but what the hell! Imagine if every link to edit something opened in a
new tab...
So we're reducing the impact of this nonsense by opening most dashboard
links in the same window; for now, we're still opening in a new window
links to download files and links that might point to external websites.
We'll address those ones in the future.
Most screen readers don't notify when a link is about to open in a new
window [1], so we're indicating it, like we were already doing in most
places with similar links.
We could also add a visual indicator, but since links inside labels
already have accessibility issues, giving more attention to these links
might make matters worse.
[1] https://www.powermapper.com/tests/screen-readers/navigation/a-target-blank/
We used to open these links in new tabs, but accidentally stopped doing
so in commit 75a28fafc.
While, in general, automatically opening a link in a new tab/window is a
bad idea, the exception comes when people are filling in a form and
there are links to pages that contain information which will help them
fill in a form.
There are mainly two advantages of this approach. First, it makes less
likely for people to accidentally lose the information they were filling
in. And, second, having both the form and a help page open at the same
time can make it easier to fill in the form.
However, opening these links in new tabs also has disadvantages, like
taking control away from people or making it harder to navigate through
pages when using a mobile phone.
So this is a compromise solution.
Quoting usability experts Jakob Nielsen and Anna Kaley [1]:
> [Opening PDF files in new tabs] is problematic, because it assumes
> users will always do the exact same things with certain file formats,
> which isn’t always the case.
There are many examples of this situation. For example, some people
(myself included) configure their browser so it downloads PDF files
instead of opening them in the browser. In this situation, a new tab is
opened, a blank page is displayed, the file is downloaded, and then
either the tab is closed or the blank page needs to be manually closed.
The end result is really annoying.
Other situations include people who use a mobile phone browser, where
navigating through tabs is generally much harder than doing so on a
desktop browser.
But IMHO the most important point is: every browser already provides a
way to open "regular" links in a new tab, so people can choose what to
do, but if we decide to open the link in a new tab, we take control away
from them, and people who'd like to open the link in the same tab might
feel frustrated.
In these cases, the links either say "download" or include the word
"PDF", so people know in advance that they're going to download/open a
PDF file, and so we're giving them information and, by removing the
`target` attribute, we're giving them control over their browser so they
can choose what's convenient for them.
[1] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/new-browser-windows-and-tabs
We were displaying documents in five places, and in five different ways.
Sometimes with the metadata in parenthesis after the title, sometimes
with the metadata below the title, sometimes without metadata, sometimes
with an icon in front of the document, and sometimes with a separate
link to download the file.
So we're now displaying the same thing everywhere. Not sure whether this
is the best solution, but at least it's consistent.
We aren't unifying the way we display a list of documents, though, since
different sections look pretty different and I'm not sure whether the
same style would look well everywhere.
Note that we're renaming the `document` HTML class in the documents
table to `document-row` so the styles for the `document` class don't
apply here.
While in unit tests it's great to have different tests for different
expectations, system tests are slow, and so it's better to have just one
test for all the expectations related to the same actions.
Using the `document` or `documents` classes meant styles defined for the
public list of documents conflict with these ones.
So now we're using HTML classes that match the name of the Ruby
component classes, as we usually do.
We were using a "Download file" link in one place, while in another
place we had an additional column where the name of the document was a
link to download it.
There's a link next to it that does the exact same thing and includes
the word "download", which was confusing in some cases since people
might think that links with different texts lead to different pages.
As far as possible I think the code is clearer if we use CRUD actions
rather than custom actions. This will make it easier to add the action
to remove votes in the next commit.
Note that we are adding this line as we need to validate it that a vote
can be created on a comment by the current user:
```authorize! :create, Vote.new(voter: current_user, votable: @comment)```
We have done it this way and not with the following code as you might
expect, as this way two votes are created instead of one.
```load_and_authorize_resource through: :comment, through_association: :votes_for```
This line tries to load the resource @comment and through the association
"votes_for" it tries to create a new vote associated to that debate.
Therefore a vote is created when trying to authorise the resource and
then another one in the create action, when calling @comment.vote.
As far as possible I think the code is clearer if we use CRUD actions
rather than custom actions. This will make it easier to add the action
to remove votes in the next commit.
Note that we are adding this line as we need to validate it that a vote
can be created on a debate by the current user:
```authorize! :create, Vote.new(voter: current_user, votable: @debate)```
We have done it this way and not with the following code as you might
expect, as this way two votes are created instead of one.
```load_and_authorize_resource through: :debate, through_association: :votes_for```
This line tries to load the resource @debate and through the association
"votes_for" it tries to create a new vote associated to that debate.
Therefore a vote is created when trying to authorise the resource and
then another one in the create action, when calling @debate.vote_by (which
is called by @debate.register_vote).
In order to reduce the code used to add styles to the buttons,
we removed the classes that had been added and handled it with
the new aria-pressed attribute
There were already some menu items to customization pages under the "Site content" menu. It therefore makes sense to move "Custom images" and "Custom content blocks" (which were previously
located under "Settings") to "Site content" as well.
In order to leave the page using turbolinks and then going back, we were
clicking on the "Help" page link, but this link doesn't have to be
available on every Consul Democracy installation.
So we're using the link to the homepage instead.
This syntax has been added in Ruby 3.1.
Not using a variable name might not be very descriptive, but it's just
as descriptive as using "block" as a variable name. Using just `&` we
get the same amount of information than using `&block`: that we're
passing a block.
We're still using `&action` in `around_action` methods because here we
aren't using a generic name for the variable, so (at least for now) we
aren't running this cop on controllers using `around_action`.
We were getting a deprecation warning:
DEPRECATION WARNING: Rendering actions with '.' in the name is
deprecated: welcome/_recommended_carousel.html.erb
Note that `Capybara.app_host` now returns `nil` by default and that
breaks tests using `lvh.me` or our custom `app_host` method, so we're
setting `Capybara.app_host` to the value it had in earlier versions of
Rails. I also haven't found a way to remove the code to set the
integration session host in relationable tests which I mentioned in
commit ffc14e499.
Also note that we now filter more parameters, and that they match
regular expressions, so filtering `:passw` means we're filtering
`passwd`, `password`, ...
We applied the Capybara/SpecificMatcher in commit f52a86b46. However,
this rule doesn't convert methods finding <a> tags to methods finding
links because <a> tags only count as links when they've got the `href`
attribute. For instance, in the `xss_spec.rb` file we check what happens
when clicking on an anchor tag because we're testing that the `href`
attribute has been removed and so we can't use `click_link`.
So, basically, we can't enable a rule to automatically detect when we're
using `have_css` instead of `have_link`, but we should still do it
because `have_link` adds an extra check which affects accessibility
since it makes sure the tag has the `href` attribute and so it's
recognizable as a link by screen readers.
This rule was added in rubocop-rspec 2.19.0.
When freezing time in a test, `travel_back` is called automatically when
the test finishes, so we can do it in a `before` block instead of an
`around` block.
Note this rule didn't detect our usage of `freeze_time` because we were
using it on cops with a certain tag, but I expect the rule to be able to
detect this usage in the future.
Internet Explorer 8 was released in 2009 and people using it already
know that most web pages look broken on it, so we don't need to warn
them.
Removing it makes our application layout file much easier to read and
modify.
We originally added the `cached_votes_up > 0` in commit 4ce95e273
because back then `cached_votes_up` was used in the denominator. That's
no longer the case, and it doesn't make sense to mark a debate with 1
vote and 10 flags as conflictive but not doing it when the debate has no
votes and 1000 flags.
We're fixing the bug right now because we're about to change the
affected line in order to apply a new rubocop rule.
This rule was added in rubocop 1.37.0. It's particularly useful in the
background image spec, since now there's one less backslash to decipher
when reading the code :).
This rule was added in rubocop-rspec 2.12.0, and we were already
following it most of the time.
However, the rule isn't working correctly in some cases, such as input
selectors, so we aren't enabling it.
This rule was added in rubocop-rspec 2.11.0. We aren't adding it
because, out of 3 offenses, this cop can only correct 2 automatically.
Not sure how to correct the other one since it uses `.and change`.
This rule was added in rubocop-rspec 2.9.0.
We were using `be_nil` 50% of the time, and `be nil` the rest of the
time. No strong preference for either one, but IMHO we don't lose
anything be being consistent.
