The link to "See all investments" didn't have the `heading_id`
parameter, which resulted in the ballot information not being displayed
when in the voting phase.
We could modify the link to include the `heading_id` parameter, but IMHO
it's more robust to select the heading automatically when there's only
one heading. That way manually accessing the page without a `heading_id`
parameter will still work as if the heading had been selected.
There's no real point in linking to a page offering users to choose a
heading when there's only one heading to choose.
So we're linking to the investments index instead.
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.
Before the "valuating" phase, all investments have undecided feasibility
and none have been selected, so the filters would return no results
(except the "not_unfeasible" one, which would return everything).
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.
As mentioned in commit bc0f04075, a <select> field which submits its
form on change causes many accessibility and usability issues. In this
case there was also an incompatibility with the advanced search filter
which caused a bug solved in commit 541a5fa89.
So the question is where to position the filters and how to display
them. One factor to take into the account is how relevant these filters
are, particularly compared to the links to select the prefered order,
since we don't usually give users the choice of both filters and orders.
Our filters don't really make sense until the valuation phase starts,
since before that phase investments aren't selected nor their
feasibility is decided.
After that phase, the only phase where citizens are really involved
is the final voting; the rest of the phases are done by valuators and
administrators. In the final voting, citizens can only vote on selected
projects, and that's the default filter during that phase.
So these filters are mainly there for information purposes, and not to
help citizens in the phases where they're actually involved (accepting
projects, selecting projects and balloting).
Orders, on the other hand, play a crucial role during the final voting
phase. Since citizens might have already voted for a few projects and
have, let's say, 100,000€ left, ordering by price allows them to find
which projects are within their remaining budget.
In conclusion, orders are more important than filters, and so they
should have a more prominent place.
For consistency with the proposals section, where we've got some links
in the sidebar (bottom part of the page on small screens) providing a
similar funcionality, like accessing selected proposals or archived or
retired proposals, we're moving the investments filters to the sidebar
(bottom part of the page on small screens) as well.
A <div> can't be a direct child of a <ul>. In this case the <ul> tag
didn't make much sense because there isn't a list; just a map.
Note the `z-index` rule which was added in commit 25e1afea48 is ignored
because the map element is statically positioned. I'm not sure why it
was added; can't reproduce the rendering problem both that commit and
commit c5a749212 mention. Maybe back then the element had a `position:
relative` rule or similar somewhere.
Many CONSUL installations struggle when trying to define their own
settings or trying to overwrite the default ones. Particularly because
tests assume the default settings are used, so changing them breaks the
test suite in many cases.
So we're adding a custom setting model in order to make it easier to
change the default settings and define new ones, while making sure doing
so won't break the tests.
While these settings can also be changed by administrators, defining
custom settings in the code is useful in come cases. For example, when
certain default settings have been decided while using staging
environments and there's interest in using the same settings on
production, when institutions would like to use the same custom settings
across several CONSUL installations, or (when we implement multitenancy)
when defining the same default settings for each new tenant.
This way the curve will still work as intended on very large screens.
We're not taking into account the padding of the <main> element in the
SDG goals index for simplicity, since adding it barely has any effect.
The "enabled" column was aligned to the center, which looked weird when
seen on small screens because the `table-for-mobile` class (which I
think was added by accident) shows `th` and `td` elements using
`display: block`. Besides, using `display: block` on these elements
means browsers don't identify them as table headings/cells anymore,
causing accessibility issues.
There was an edge case where we could access the headings index without
sending the mode parameter in the URL. That meant when sending the
headings form we could send a form with the mode hidden field set to an
empty string. When that happened, the returned text was
`t("admin.budgets.help.#{i18n_namespace}.`, which returned a hash.
Using `multiple` when an empty strin is received solves the issue.
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 problem of having actions next to the title is that, when there are
titles of very different lenghts, at certain resolutions some actions
will be next to their titles (because there'll be space for everything)
but some actions will be below their titles. This makes it hard for
people to follow where the actions are.
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.
Since managing investments is a very common action, with this link
administrators won't have to go back to the index page to manage
investments; they can access it from either the budgets index page or
the budget page.
Since now the links we've got on the budget page are similar to the ones
we've got in the index page table, we're styling them in a similar way.
We're also fixing a small typo en the investments path; it works exactly
the same way as it used to, but passing `budget` instead of `budget_id:
budget.id` is shorter and more consistent with what we do in other
places.
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>
IMHO selecting in how many headings it's possible to support investments
isn't necessary when there's only one option to choose from. It's
obvious that if there's only one heading, it will be impossible to
select investments from more than one heading.
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.
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.
Even if it was looking OK using `margin-left`, there were probably edge
cases where it wouldn't behave as we expected.
As mentioned in the previous commit, this won't be necessary once
everyone uses browsers supporting the `gap` property in flexbox layouts,
but this won't happen for a few years.
In a few months we might also consider using the `margin-inline-start`
property, which is currently supported by about 97% of the browsers [1].
[1] https://caniuse.com/css-logical-props
This way we remove duplication and it'll be easier to add better support
for RTL languages.
In a few years this might not be necessary since support for the `gap`
property in a flexbox layout will improve. At the time of writing,
however, only 86.5% of the browsers support it [1].
[1] https://caniuse.com/flexbox-gap
