CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Creating a new price set and setting up some fields, I notice that

a) the screen layout is weird (see attached), and

b) depending on how I do things sometimes I get presented with the overlay/pop-up thing - which can be of dubious value depending on what you are trying to do - and sometimes I don't.

Personally I like to have lots of screen to work with, especially as some of CiviCRM's forms can be large and complicated. I'm not sure of the value of putting everything into a little pop-up that sites on top of my browser window and often makes me do a lot more scrolling.

Fair comment - I'll try to elucidate:

1. Create a new price set. This process happens on a page with no pop-up (although as the new price set form is fairly short and simple, perhaps it should use a pop-up - I don't know what the established rules are are on whether to use a pop-up or not.

2. This takes you to the Add Field screen, again a page not a pop-up. Set the options and save. If I click 'Save' I get taken to the summary screen for my newly created price set. If I click 'Save and New' I get a new Add Field screen, all presented as pages.

3. From the summary screen of newly created price set - /civicrm/admin/price/field?reset=1&action=browse&sid=XX - if I choose to now add a further price field by clicking on 'Add Price Field' I get a new 'Add Field' form, only this time it is presented in a pop-up.

4. From the price set overview page: /civicrm/admin/price?reset=1 I can preview any of my price sets, and that preview is displayed on a page. However if looking at the summary screen for a particular price set, clicking on 'Preview all fields' or the preview for any given field in the price set, brings up the preview in a pop-up.

I think that whilst this use of pages or pop-ups may have some sense to it, it feels inconsistent from a user perspective. Why do I sometimes get the Add Field form in a pop-up and sometimes not? (I can imagine the doubts and questions in the user's mind: Is there a difference between these two forms? Have I done something wrong?)

On a broader note, when to use a pop-up and when not. It's tricky, and probably one of those things that if you asked ten people you'd get ten different answers. For me, pop-ups are great if the content being presented in the pop-up is small/simple and fits in the pop-up without requiring scrolling within the pop-up. If choosing a pop-up to present content means that you are cramming lots of content or a long form into the pop-up window, forcing the user to scroll where they may well not have needed to had the same content been presented on a page, then the value of using a pop-up very quickly fades.

Having said that, I can also appreciate the need for a consistent approach, so it's not a simple issue.

Drupal 7 makes extensive use of an admin overlay, and for a long time I worked with that. Then I realised that I could turn it off, which I now do on the majority of sites I work with. For me at least I prefer life without the overlay. I invest a lot of time in front of a screen, I have a 24 inch display which I find helps a great deal, and I like to be able to make full use of that screen real estate and not be forced to poke around in a tiny window that cuts my screen real estate in half (or worse).

Pop-ups are useful and valuable and quick and handy in many situations. In general terms I think the UI enhancements in 4.5 are very positive and will be welcomed by users. Thanks for reading.

Thanks for responding.

While writing my note I did play with the resizing and full-screen options, and these do address the concern to some extent. Although the changes applied by the user don't seem to 'stick' in any way. The next pop-up that - ahem - pops up - goes back to being the default size. And I'm pleased to learn that the whole facility can be turned off, giving the user ultimate control over the feature.

I agree that the approach is promising, and I'd like to see it succeed. It gives CiviCRM a more professional look and feel which I think will go down well with end users by and large. And if it can improve overall performance in terms of the responsiveness of the application, that can only be a good thing.

But the edges still need some smoothing, in terms of when a pop-up appears, and how big it is when it does appear - maybe it could be deeper for longer forms to reduce scrolling (I don't know what the technical issues may be in terms of handling the specifications of the pop-up in any given instance). I'm not certain what an auto-resize feature might look like, but it could potentially meet some or all of this perceived need.

And, as mentioned earlier, consistency in how and when the pop-up is used seems to me to be critically important. If I'm previewing a price set or a single field from a price set, then that could, and probably should, always be inside a pop-up regardless of how I got to that button.

And here's another: https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/pull/3870

Here I did some improvements to the workflows where you add a container and then create stuff to go in that container. Searching the codebase I found 3 such workflows: profiles, custom fields, and price sets. If anyone knows of others, or spots any other funky flows related to popups, let me know.