Brian Shaughnessy is working on some layout improvements for a client - which may potentially result in some core code contributions. He posted this question on the forums today:
I notice there's some inconsistencies regarding how some of the forms are laid out. Specifically, I'm running into forms that use a mix of table/tr/td tags with dl/dt/dd tags to layout the form labels and fields. This makes it more difficult to have consistency laying out the page using css, because those tags are structured differently.
My personal preference is to use table tags exclusively. Because of the built-in structure of dl/dt/dd tags, I find them hard to layout on a consistent and growable/shrinkable manner. I know that in a strict-css-world we shouldn't use table tags for layout, but for a long list of form labels and fields, many of which have option contingencies, tables seem like the most logical way to handle layout.
Since this is an issue we've struggled with, and because we're looking at changes to some key screens and forms to improve usability - I'm posting my response here as a blog. Hopefully we'll grab a few more eyeballs and get some useful input from folks with expertise in this area...
Blogs
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Abril 9, 2008
By shot Filed under CiviCRMWe’re currently planning on various improvements to the duplicate contact finding (and merging) engine for CiviCRM 2.1. Among others, we plan to have a more responsive mechanism by caching the dedupe search results in a more effective way, add the ability to restrict deduping to a certain group, as well as move at least parts of the dedupe out of PHP and into MySQL (now that we require MySQL 5 anyway).
Abril 9, 2008
By lobo Filed under CiviCRMSome members of the core CiviCRM team are getting together for a design and code sprint towards 2.1 in Nelson NZ from April 24th - May 8th. As part of improving CiviCRM, we'd love to get together with some CiviCRM users and learn a bit about how we can improve and make CiviCRM more effective.
Abril 9, 2008
By lobo Filed under CiviCRMThis event is cancelled. The training group is going for drinks and dinner in CBD. Send me email if you'd like to join
As most of you are aware, we are doing a CiviCRM developer training in Melbourne. We are keen to do a meetup with CiviCRM users in Melbourne on April 21st at 6:00 pm on the second day of the training.
Abril 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
Abril 7, 2008
By shot Filed under CiviCRMTo side-step the issue of users switching our demo installation to non-English languages and as a proof-of-concept for a possible future CiviCRM feature, we’ve implemented a ‘dynamic’ language switching – after logging in, check the demo’s dashboard (i.e., the ‘CiviCRM Home’ page) and look for the ‘Choose Language’ box in the top right.
Abril 5, 2008
By deepak.srivastavaFiled under There are many screens in CiviCRM where the options in one drop-down affect what you see in a second or third drop-down menu. For example, when you do an Import or Export, and select Email - you then get a second drop-down to select a location (Home, Work, etc.). The widget which we use for this is PEAR's Hierarchical Select.
Abril 4, 2008
By lobo Filed under CiviCRMUPDATE: We have discontinued our use of UserVoice as of 12/11/2008
We've been trying to figure out a good structured and fair way of getting user input. We were pointed to UserVoice.com by Greg Heller at NTEN. UserVoice seems a fairly simple Web 2.0 site which does exactly that. Hopefully it has a decent search / sort / categoization system to handle an expanding list of features.
Abril 4, 2008
By Dave GreenbergFiled under UPDATE: You can review detailed implementation specifications here and here
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"We are an Association whose members are organizations. How can these organizations signup and renew their memberships online?"
"We get contributions from companies as well as individuals. How can we configure our online contribution pages to handle this?"
"How can we allow someone from an organization to update the organization's address and contact info?"
These are questions that have come up over the past year from users - most recently with Emily Frazier who works on Public-access media related sites, and participated in our New Orleans Boot Camp. Working through real use cases and options with Emily was very helpful - and we think we've come up with an approach that makes sense. If you're organization has requirements in this area - please take some time to think about how well this will meet your needs.
