Blogs

A major focus for the next version of CiviCRM (v2.3) is improvement and optimisation of the user interface and its usability. During the last few weeks, together with our Advisory Group, we've been busy investigating different options for changing the way CiviCRM looks and behaves. This project will has quite a large scope, and will span over at least two versions. For version 2.3, one goal is to unify the way different functions are being handled from a user interface perspective. We'd like clean up the HTML and CSS for as many templates as possible, and introduce stable standards for building user interface elements. From a technical point of view, one of the efforts is to make heavy use of jQuery and jQueryUI, but that seems like the easy part. Much more difficult is figuring out how to make our user interface easier to use, provide solutions that will allow people to perform everyday CiviCRM tasks quickly and effectively - and also how to make it look nice. :-) There is ongoing discussion within core team and Advisory Group on this, we are experimenting with different solutions. We will be asking you for opinions and feedback as we move forward with this part of the work for CiviCRM 2.3. One important piece is improving the contact add/edit screen, which is one of the most crucial parts of the system. It is used quite frequently and is also quite complicated. We've built a mockup screen to share our draft "re-design". We had a few iterations of work on this screen, and we've come to the stage where we would like you to give us feedback on whole idea. Two main goals behind the changes: Provide a simple and quick way to input the most important information - name and contact information. This has been approached by moving email, phone and IM fields together with first name, last name etc into to first section. Make the user interface on this screen more compact and make it easier to get to the sections you want to edit with minimal scrolling.

Penguin Day is coming to San Francisco on Saturday, April 25, 2009, right before the NTC. The agenda includes several CiviCRM-related sessions - both for folks just checking out CiviCRM, and for experienced users / developers. Several members of the CiviCRM core team and our new Community Advisory Group will be in attendance as well as - so it's a great way to make "civi-connections". You can register now at the Penguin Day site.  

Dave Greenberg recently posted about our upcoming book sprint saying "almost every week folks ask whether there is a CiviCRM Book they can read".

So there must be something missing from the documentation. And given that the book will be in addition to what is on the Wiki - not a replacement for it - the two questions I am asking myself are:

'What are we missing in the documentation? And how should the documentation and the book complement each other?'

The team has released version 2.2.2 with approximately 25 bug fixes and improvements. Notable fixes and improvements include: Joomla! 1.5.10 - fix problems with the CiviCRM installer for the latest Joomla! release. Drupal - load civicrm.css using drupal_add_css() to improve performance Event Price Sets - specify default values for price set field options (radio button, select, checkbox fields) You can review a complete list of 2.2.2 changes on the issue tracker.

Almost every week folks ask whether there is a CiviCRM Book they can read to help them learn about all the cool things that CiviCRM can do. Thanks to a grant from the Information Program initiative of the Open Society Institute - we will soon have just that (a big tip of the hat to the Information Program Project Manager for making this happen!). We will be writing the book using tools and techniques developed and hosted by Floss Manuals - whose mission is to provide quality manuals about how to use free software. Adam Hyde, the founder of the Floss Manuals project will be guiding a team of CiviCRM users, integrators and core team members through the process of creating the book during a 5-day Book Sprint to be held during the week of May 4. The team will also have editorial support from Andy Oram who is an editor for technical publisher and information provider O'Reilly Media, specializing currently in open source technologies and software engineering. The finished book will be available as a free PDF download from the Floss Manuals site. Those who want a printed hard-copy book can purchase it for a nominal fee from the Floss Manuals store. Check out the How to Bypass Internet Censorship manual for an example of a finished product.

The team has released version 2.2.1 with approximately 30 bug fixes and improvements. Notable improvements include: Events: Provide a Drupal block which lists upcoming events Mailings: allow users to cancel a running mail job Contributions: re-introduce summary contribution information in search results Pledges: support pay-later mode for pledge payments You can review a complete list of 2.2.1 changes on the issue tracker.

We’ve just finished describing some of the new CiviEvent features we’d like to put in CiviCRM 2.3, including waitlisting and optional admin approval of participants. Please take a look at the CiviEvent - New Features for 2.3 wiki page and voice your opinions.

A quick braindump:

Profile are a great way of simplifying the interface and provide more focussed forms, but some of the goodies of the normal edit form are gone. For instance, the employer isn't anymore an autocomplete field. luckily, with the REST interface and a jquery autocomplete plugin, that's a few lines to add to make it work:

add on the templates/CRM/Profile/Form/Edit.tpl

{if $session->get('userID') > 0} {literal} jQuery(document).ready(function($) {

There are many places in CiviCRM where lists of records are presented... when you search for contacts, you get a list of contact records; when you go to manage events, you get a list of events; etc. Kurund blogged recently about prototypes for improving usability for these record listings (we call them "selectors" internally)... and we got a lot of good feedback from that post. Kurund and Amit on our team have now put up another iteration - which we'd love to have folks look at and comment on: » Contact Listing