We were displaying dates in two different formats in the same component,
leading to strange hacks like manually calling the `call` method or not
being able to use `render_inline` in the tests.
Since we're going to reuse one of these formats outside the budgets
section, we're splitting the component. We're also removing the
mentioned hacks.
Add a help text on admin budget show page and improve text from Admin::Budgets::HelpComponent in order to
clarify its functionality when we are using the wizard.
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.
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 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>
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.
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 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.
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.
Note we're keeping this section's original design (which had one button
to add a new group which after being pressed was replaced by a button to
cancel) but we aren't using Foundation's `data-toggle` because there
were a couple of usability and accessibility issues.
First, using `data-toggle` multiple times and applying it to multiple
elements led to the "cancel" button not being available after submitting
a form with errors. Fixing it made the code more complicated.
Second, the "Add new group" button always had the `aria-expanded`
attribute set to "true", so my screen reader was announcing the button
as expanded even when it wasn't. I didn't manage to fix it using
`data-toggle`.
Finally, after pressing either the "Add new group" and "Cancel" buttons,
the keyboard focus was lost since the elements disappeared.
So we're simplifying the HTML and adding some custom JavaScript to be
able to handle the focus and manually setting the `aria-expanded`
attribute.
Co-Authored-By: Javi Martín <javim@elretirao.net>
Co-Authored-By: Julian Herrero <microweb10@gmail.com>
In this case, the duration of the budget cannot be determined, and the
application was crashing when trying to do so.
Now we're just returning `nil` as duration.
There's an edge case where the current phase of the budget was disabled.
In this case, the application was crashing.
I'm not sure what we should do regarding this case. Is it OK to allow
disabling the current phase? Is it OK to allow selecting a disabled
phase as the current phase?
Since I'm not sure about it, for now I'm leaving it the same way it was.
Co-authored-by: Julian Herrero <microweb10@gmail.com>
Before commit 28caabecd, it was clear which budgets were in draft mode
because their phase was "drafting".
Now the phase isn't "drafting" anymore, so we have to make it clear
somehow that the budget is a draft.
I'm using styles similar to the ones we added in commit 2f636eaf7 for
completed budgets but at the same time making them slightly different so
it's easy to differenciate completed and drafting budgets.
We're going to change it a bit, and using a component allows us to use
the `header` method and easily add a title to this page, which lacked
the `<title>` tag.
Previously the draft mode was a phase of the PB, but that had some
limitations.
Now the phase drafting disappears and therefore the PB can have the
status published or not published (in draft mode).
That will give more flexibility in order to navigate through the
different phases and see how it looks for administrators before
publishing the PB and everybody can see.
By default, the PB is always created in draft mode, so it gives you
the flexibility to adjust and modify anything before publishing it.
Note the CSS could probably be improved to avoid duplication with other
button style definitions. However, that's fine because we're going to
change the style of the links soon.
For the same reason, I haven't bothered to style every single link the
way it was until now.
