We plan to make usability / UI improvements a major focus of the 2.3 release. We will be working on and putting up prototypes and mockups of many of these changes over the coming weeks - and will be looking for folks to give us feedback on them.
One area we're looking at is the "selectors" - lists of records - which appear throughout CiviCRM. These are used to list search results (lists of contacts, contributions, etc.) and many other records (profile fields, activity types, etc.). Currently a big part of the horizontal space for these is taken up by "action links" - Edit, View, Delete, Disable, etc. This can cause horizontal scrolling and limits the number of columns we can show / include in each row.
We've developed an alternate approach for this - where there is a single "action icon" on each row. Clicking on it gives you a list of available actions. You can see this approach here on our new trunk sandbox (where we will be showcasing lots more changes and "experiments" going forward):
Profile Listings
Please take a few minutes to try this out and give us your feedback / thoughts on this. Will it be helpful or confusing for users?
NOTE: For this "review" please just focus on the Profile listings in the main section of the page. Don't worry about the input box and "bar" above the page header - we're working on something else which we'll put forward in a separate blog.
Update:
Based on feedback we made few changes to Action link UI
Profile Listings
We have also implemented context menu for Contact Selector. So when you right click on contact selector rows, we show menu with commonly used actions.
Contact Search
Blog posts by kurund
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October 19, 2008
By kurund Filed under ArchitectureLately there has been lot of confusion using Name, Title/Label and Value. There is also a lot of inconsistency in code and database, hence we are planning to fix it in CiviCRM v2.x release.
Lets take an example of Participant Status, 'Registered'. In this case Name will be 'Registered', value will be an integer from 1..N (this depends on each install) and Label/title can be "Registered" or "I will come" etc. (or a localized version of the word/phrase).
Basic rules are:
September 18, 2008
By kurundFiled under It was an eventful period after beta 4. With excellent support from the community, we were able to identify and close quite a few trivial issues (and a few critical ones). The fifth 2.1 Beta distribution (probably last one before stable) is now available for download on SourceForge.
For all those eagerly waiting to being translation work on 2.1, we are now in "string freeze" - and the translation site has been updated with 2.1 files: http://translations.civicrm.org
If you are planning on using new 2.1 features AND / OR upgrading an existing site to 2.1 - NOW is the time to test the upgrade with YOUR DATA and identify any remaining issues with new or existing features. The development team will actively work with you resolve any upgrade issues during this phase of the release cycle. If you are unable to test the release by downloading it - then the next best thing is to try out the new features, bug fixes, as well as the workflows you use most often by logging in to the public demo.
August 11, 2008
By kurundFiled under It was 6th August 2008, CiviCRM team was getting ready for first alpha release of version 2.1. You could feel the tension and sense the responsibility on everyone's face. Although it was an alpha release, each one wanted to close their outstanding issues / bugs. We were trying to get Open Issues count below 10 and wanted to close as much QA issues as possible.
May 4, 2008
By kurund Filed under TeamsI am a big fan of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, hence i was very excited about coming to New Zealand and exploring few Middle Earth locations. I must say NZ has some of the most amazing places I have ever seen.
April 7, 2008
By kurundFiled under Continuing the database cleanup that we started with v2.0, we are planning to drop some of the unused fields from civicrm_address table.
CiviCRM v2.0 ERD
List of fields that will be dropped.
1. street_number 2. street_number_suffix 3. street_number_predirectional 4. street_name 5. street_type 6. street_number_postdirectional 7. street_unit 8. supplemental_address_3
November 19, 2007
By kurund Filed under CiviCRMAnd it all began like normal Barcamp (like any other non-conference). As we all know, most of the developers are nocturnal, yet again CodeCampMumbai was no exception and started off schedule.
I am here with one of my colleagues(Deepak) to work on Facebook plugin for CiviCRM. Some initial specs on this feature: Facebook Integration
Other interesting projects include lighting up bulb using web interface(PHP), Mapping and Adding Events on Google Map.
September 10, 2007
By kurund Filed under CiviCRMI traveled all the way to Delhi to attend OSSCampDelhi, Non-Conference (Bar Camp), my first Open Source Camp in India. It started well with a good presentation on "HIGH Performance Websites". Speaker shared few tricks how to make you front-end load faster.
* Use of expire headers for javascript, css * Use of compressor to remove spaces in javascript using tools like (Dojo Shrink safe, YUI Compressor, JSMin, Dean Edwards Packer) * use of mod_gzip / mod deflate for apache * not to use @import use "link" tags * load script at last ( although I don't agree )
July 3, 2007
By kurundFiled under In addition to many new features in CiviCRM v1.8, we have worked on few improvements for CiviCRM Profile.
1. We have added functionality which allows people to create User Account in Drupal using CiviCRM profile. So this way, user can create customized User Registration pages without using default Drupal User Registration form.
For more details: CRM-1633
2. Another interesting feature for profile is Option to Generate Email Notifications when a profile is created or edited.
February 24, 2007
By kurund Filed under CiviReportIt's been a while, i was trying to get Eclipse-BIRT working on my machine (Ubuntu Edgy). Finally got success few days back.
Here are the steps for installation:
1) Get the Eclipse using Ubuntu update manager.
sudo aptitude install eclipse
2) BIRT package is not installed by default in Eclipse. So use Eclipse update manager and select package BIRT Reporting Tool.
You might get few errors: - Could not write in /usr/lib .....
chmod -R 777 /usr/lib/eclipse
- I also got following errors: Requested operation cannot be performed because it would invalidate the current configuration. See details for more information.
