Placeholders are hard to read due to their low contrast, and users might
want to read them after they're already gone, and so they cause both
accessibility and usability issues.
The installer creates the application in the following path:
home_dir: "/home/{{{ deploy_user }}"
We update the variable "deploy_to" in the deploy-secrets
file to be consistent with the installer.
While we are modifying the file we also update the "user"
variable in staging and preproduction sections with the
installer default value: "deploy_user: deploy" the same as
we already have in the production section.
The interface was a bit confusing, since after clicking on "See
unfeasible investments" (or similar), we were on a page where no
investments were shown.
Besides, since commit 7e3dd47d5, the group page is only linked from the
"my ballot" page, through a link inviting the user to vote in that
group, and it's only possible to vote selected investments (which is the
default filter during the final voting phase).
The only reason we had these links here was these links weren't present
in the investments page. But they're present there since commit
04605d5d5, so we don't need them in the group page anymore.
We removed it in commit c322b2c4a because it was hard to know the
difference between "Feasible" and "Not unfeasible". We're renaming the
"Not unfeasible" filter instead.
We're also moving the "selected" filter so it appears before the
"unselected" filter, just like the "feasible" filter appears before the
"unfeasible" filter.
The text "Groups and headings" might cause users to think both groups
and headings have the same hierarchy, and wonder whether what they
immediately see are groups or headings.
Using "Heading groups" we make it clear that what comes immediately is a
group, and then we see each group has headings.
Since the message might appear several times on the same page, it's
useful to give a bit more context. Besides, usability tests show that
when there's a group with no headings, there's no clear indication on
the page that the group is actually a group and not a heading.
We're also adding some emphasis to the group name in the "Showing
headings" message, to be consistent with the emphasis we've
added the the group name in the "No headings" message.
Captions benefit blind screen reader users who navigate through tables,
particularly in this case because we potentially have several tables
with headings (one table per group), so when navigating through tables
it might be hard to know which group the headings belong to.
In this case they also benefit sighted users. Usability tests have shown
the "Groups and headings" section is a bit confusing, so adding a
caption like "Headings in Districts" helps clarifying Districts is a
group and the table refers to headings in that group.
The very same table is rendered in the "headings" step of the budget
creation wizard. However, in that case the information of the caption is
redundant because the page is specific for headings belonging to a
certain group. We're making the element invisible but still keeping it
for screen reader users in order to ease their navigation through
tables.
The population field is optional and only used for statistic purposes,
and the content block feature is also secondary, so IMHO it's OK if we
don't display it in the index; if administrators need this information,
they can see it by going to the "edit heading" page.
With this change it's easier to navigate the table on small and medium
screens. Actually, the whole page is easier to navigate, since we
greatly reduce the cases where a horizontal scrollbar is present.
The buttons to create polls associated with a budget were too prominent,
appearing on the table as if they were as used as the link to manage
investments. Most CONSUL installations don't use physical booths, and
would probably wonder what that button is about.
We're moving it to a more discrete place, at the bottom of the budget
page. This way we can also split the action in two: on budgets not
having a poll, we display the button in a not-so-accessible position (at
the bottom of the page), since this button will only be used once per
budget at most. Once the poll has been created, it means this feature is
going to be used, so we display a link to manage ballots more
prominently at the top of the page. If the budget has finished the final
voting stage without creating a poll, we don't show either the link or
the button because this feature can no longer be used.
We're also adding some texts indicating what this feature is about,
since it's probably one of the least understood features in CONSUL
(probably because the interface is very confusing... but that's a
different story).
Since now from the budget page we can access every feature related to
the budget, we can remove the "preview" action from the budgets index
table, since this feature isn't that useful for budgets once they're
published.
Now the budgets table doesn't take as much space as it used to, although
it's still too wide to be handled properly on devices with a small
screen.
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.
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.
Usability tests showed some users were struggling when seeing the word
"Required" as a legend (it's actually styled as a title), since this
isn't a common pattern when filling in forms. They were expecting
something like "Fields with * are required", and so the "Required" text
alone made them feel the sentence wasn't complete.
We could also add an "*" to required fields in addition to the
"Required" text. In this case, however, some users wondered what the
asterisk was about: "It can't mean 'required' because they've already
said these fields are required".
We'll probably have to revisit required and optional fields again. For
now, we're just doing a small improvement.
The integration between Airbrake/Errbit and DelayedJob wasn't working
because we require our dependencies in alphabetic order, and so by the
time `airbrake` was required, `delayed_job` wasn't loaded.
So we're manually requiring the integration.
It could be argued that seeing which proposals a user follows is a good
indicator of which proposals a user has supported, since we're
automatically creating follows for supported proposals since commit
74fbde09f. So now, we're extending the `public_interests` funcionality,
so it only shows elements users are following if they've enabled it.
This is an improvement over using the `public_activity` attribute in two
ways:
* The `public_interests` attribute is disabled by default, so by default
other users won't be able to see what a user is following
* Who has created proposals/debates/investments/comments is public
information, while who is following which elements is not; so enabling
`public_activity` shouldn't imply potentially private information should
be displayed as well
We've considered removing the `public_interests` attribute completely
and just hiding the "following" page for everyone except its owner, but
keeping it provides more compatibility with existing installations.
Its value is difficult to read due to the low contrast between the color
of the field and the color of the placeholder text, and we already have
the same information in the hint above it.
Since targets didn't have a title but only a long description, every
form allowing to select targets was pretty much unusable: we either
displayed just the code or the whole description.
Now, with a concise title, it's easier to find and select the desired
target.
The titles have been copied from The Global Goals page [1].
Note we're using the `short_title` I18n key for the `title` method and
the `long_title` I18n key for the `long_title` method. We can't use
`title` as I18n key instead of `short_title` because it would affect
existing translations.
[1] https://www.globalgoals.org/
SVG files are smaller than PNG files, can be compressed, and are
scalable.
We're choosing to render SVG files as images instead of inline because
inline SVGs aren't cached nor compressed, and they might appear several
times on the same page, making the generated HTML much larger.
We could also load them with an SVG sprite, using `<use>`, which would
reduce the number of HTTP requests when several icons are present on the
page (like in the index of most sections). However, using SVG inside an
`<img>` tag is universally supported, while the `<use>` tag doesn't
work in Internet Explorer when using an external URI and support in
Opera Mini and UC Browser is unknown.
We're already using a custom controller to handle direct uploads.
Besides, as mentioned by one of Active Storage co-authors [1], the
Active Storage DirectUploadsController doesn't provide any
authentication or validation at all, meaning anyone could create blobs
in our database by posting to `/rails/active_storage/direct_uploads`.
The response there could be then used to upload any file (again, without
validation) to `/rails/active_storage/disk/`.
For now, we're monkey-patching the controllers in order to send
unauthorized responses, since we aren't using these routes. If we ever
enable direct uploads with Active Storage, we'll have to add some sort
of authentication.
Similar upload solutions like CKEditor don't have this issue since their
controllers inherit from `ApplicationController` (which includes
authorization rules), while Active Storage controllers inherit from
`ActionController::Base`.
[1] https://discuss.rubyonrails.org/t/activestorage-direct-uploads-safe-by-default-how-to-make-it-safe/74863/2
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.
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.
When users see a label saying "With the text" and an input field, they
don't usually need a placeholder saying "Write the text". On the
contrary, this text adds noise and is hard to read due to the low
contrast between the color of the placeholder and the color of the
field, making the text an unnecessary distraction.
User testing has shown this filter isn't really useful and sometimes
makes users wonder what it's about. This is particularly true in CONSUL
installations which don't change the default values (most of them),
since users will see a filter with options like "Official position 1".
We were getting hundreds of "warning: URI.escape is obsolete" messages.
So we're using `URI::DEFAULT_PARSER.escape` instead.
IMHO it's OK to add this monkey-patch because we're replacing Paperclip
with Active Storage, and when we finish with that we'll delete this
file.
We're not adding the rule because it would apply the current line length
rule of 110 characters per line. We still haven't decided whether we'll
keep that rule or make lines shorter so they're easier to read,
particularly when vertically splitting the editor window.
So, for now, I'm applying the rule to lines which are about 90
characters long.
This way, when the language is written form right-to-left, elements
using Foundation mixins/classes will float to the opposite direction as
they do in left-to-right languages. The same will apply to text
alignment.
To offer full support for RTL languages, we need to change every single
reference to `float: left`, `float: right`, `text-align: left`,
`text-align: right`, and possible adjust other properties like `left`,
`margin-left`, `padding-left` or `border-left`. In the meantime, we at
least partially support these languages.
Replacing `float` with `flex` when possible would also improve RTL
support.
This way the code is easier to follow; the code checking whether the
list has contents is in the partial rendering the list.
We also remove some duplication setting up related content in the
controllers.
For some reason, we have to manually ignore i18n keys which were
automatically ignored when the code was in the view.
`dalli_store` is deprecated since dalli 2.7.11.
We can now enable cache_versioning. We didn't enable it when upgrading
to Rails 5.2 because of possible incompatibility with `dalli_store` [1],
even though apparently some the issues were fixed in dalli 2.7.9 and
dalli 2.7.10 [2].
Since using cache versioning makes cache expiration more efficient, and
I'm not sure whether the options we were passing to the dalli store are
valid with memcache store (documentation here is a bit lacking), I'm
just removing the option we used to double the default cache size on
production.
[1] https://www.schneems.com/2018/10/17/cache-invalidation-complexity-rails-52-and-dalli-cache-store
[2] https://github.com/petergoldstein/dalli/blob/master/History.md
