select for question type selection about surveyor_gui

[kjayma]

hmm ... for an inexperienced user, I kind of like seeing the choices at a glance.

There are a couple of ways to address your preference though. One is to customize the view for your particular application. It should be possible to do that as per the Surveyor instructions for customizing views. Haven't tried it yet, but don't see why it would not work.

In general, though, I am leaning towards setting up a configuration file. Maybe select vs pulldown question types could be a configuration choice.

Along those lines, I've been thinking about how to address all the other question types. I think we might want to make a view available that is very different from the current question view, and follows the approach of Surveyor more closely. That is, it wouldn't limit users to specific question types, but allow all the different combinations of display_types, answers, etc. that are possible in the Surveyor DSL. This would pave the way for the grid questions you were asking for earlier. The configuration file could include a setting that determines whether the basic view or the advanced view is the default. Users could also switch between the two on the fly using a button on the view.

What do you think?

[alepore]

Configurable UI would be nice!
For example i just started and i already known i don't want reports button, the add logic button etc...

[alepore]

To be able to support any question type can be the real killer feature.
Basic and advanced views is a good idea. I think the real goal is to provide an interface that abstracts as much as possible the surveyor logic, making possible for the end user to "build" what he has in mind. I think is basically is what you're saying.

Also looking at surveymonkey can provide some useful ideas, even if i think their interface is not so modern.

Anyway i've not deeply looked at surveyor(_gui) yet...

[alepore]

Another thing.. if you look at the kitchen sink survey in surveyor_gui you see the Complicated questions section is not well rendered (the problem is on the grouped question, i think).
Would be nice to re-use in some way the surveyor templates, as we basically show the same question rendering of the public frontend, right?
Not sure if it's possible...

[kjayma]

The complicated questions are not really supported yet because they don't have corresponding question types in surveyor_gui. The challenge is to give users a way to build complicated questions that is easy to grasp. I haven't spent enough time thinking about this yet, but I think it will be more challenging than simply taking the existing surveyor templates and shoehorning them into a survey builder.

I'm surprised you would not find the reports feature useful. I found this to be a big hole in Surveyor. It was helpful to have a way to build a pdf of results.

[alepore]

I find reports useful, but i'm building a custom app with very specific needs

[alepore]

about the select, i'm gonna to override it in my app because it's really using all the box space (and will be worst when other question type will be added).
every time i need to edit answers i have to scroll all the question types, and it's not likely i need to change question type often.

[kjayma]

Sounds good. If u like, log an issue on this and we will do somrthing
about it in the enginem
On May 21, 2014 11:33 AM, "Alessandro Lepore" [email protected]
wrote:

about the select, i'm gonna to override it in my app because it's really
using all the box space (and will be worst when other question type will be
added).
every time i need to edit answers i have to scroll all the question types,
and it's not likely i need to change question type often.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/3#issuecomment-43771626
.

[kjayma]

You know, it really does take a lot of real estate. I'm thinking about trying a grid of radio buttons as an alternative to a select.

[alepore]

with latests developments we are at 13 choices and counting, some labels are not very short... my choice will be a select :)

[kjayma]

I may agree, but I have an alternative I want to try first

[kjayma]

Alternative ready in the show_groups_in_surveyform branch- see if that works for you.

[alepore]

i think it's better (still prefer select).
more in general i'll need to make CSS/HTML changes for my project, will let you know if i think something can be an improvement for the gem itself.

[alepore]

noticed that on creation we have the vertical list and on editing we have the grid

[kjayma]

hmmm. Will take a look.

[kjayma]

Yup - will fix with the next push.