UI of Civi 4.5

[jaapjansma]

Hey all,

I was just trying out Civi 4.5 in the sandbox and I was wondering what people think of the UI improvements.

My opinion is that the functionality it tries to achieve is great but the way it does and it looks is too ugly...

Looking forward to what other people think.

Jaap

[xavier]

Hi,

Can you elaborate what elements you don't like? something different is always have a bit of a rejection reaction, it might only be that you need time to forget the old look.

Are they specific forms/pages that you specifically dislike?

[jaapjansma]

I am not sure if I can specify that. It is the overal impression as an example the drop down (select list) feel a bit too big and also the tables don't align neatly. The sort arrow for example gets somehow displayed between two lines. It feels like civicrm is trying to use somekind of UI framework but also keeping its old... It feels like the job is just half finished. But I cannot really specify it and it is just my impression. So I am rather wondering what other people's impression is.

So Xavier what is your impression?

[clarkac]

Fwiw, the 'Please wait...' box looks very crude and a throwback to a character based interface.  Also (worse, maybe) it appears inconsistenly.  e.g. it doesn't appear in 'Search; or 'Advanced Search' yet does appear when clicking on a tab in the Summary screen.  Imho, I'd get rid of it.

[Coleman Watts]

@jaapjansma could you post a screenshot? That's not what I see, but every CMS and theme interacts differently with CiviCRM.

[jaapjansma]

Just two screenshots with 'ugly' tables

[Coleman Watts]

Ok so you are actually talking about jQuery datatables (and not the entire UI of CiviCRM). It's good to be specific about these things.
Datatables comes with a default "jQuery-ui-based skin" but there are other skins available - perhaps you could try some out and see if there's one you think we should be using instead.

[FrTommy]

I have the Activity Dashlet on my dashboard and the 4.4.5 version the Edit View Delete Links were visible without having to scroll over in the dashlet. Now in order to get to them you have to scroll over which is bothersome.

The dashboard should have another "region" that spans the enter width.

Also the little arrows on the menus that show there are sub-items are missing and just show a broken image. (screen shot attached). I've refreshed the cache and menu with no results.

[JonGold]

Hi FrTommy - when those images are missing, in my experience that generally means that there's an incorrect setting in the Administer > System Settings > Directories or the Administer System Settings > Resource URLs pages.  Using the "Net" tab of the Firefox developer tools and looking for 404s is a good way to help track down the problem.

[Coleman Watts]

@clarkac Yes that stupid "Please wait" message has been bugging me too but every time I sat down to do something about it I ended up getting sidetracked (the css is kind of tricky). Again, it's the default we get from that jQuery plugin, and doing something other than the default takes some time and effort.
But you've reminded me that I really did intend to fix it before we released 4.5, so here it is: https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/pull/3700/files

[clarkac]

Thanks, Coleman, the spinner is much better.  And I forgot to say that the summary screen is improved in 4.5, with the tabs clearer.  I also like the top menu option of a small Civi logo with the logout option inside, which is a better use of screen space.

[FrTommy]

@JonGold   I checked those and they all seem right. Screenshots attached.

I checked for 404s in firefox Net tab and there are none. Not sure what's causing it but it didn't happen until I upgraded to the 4.5 beta2