Not sure on how to vote as some items are better in vertical and others horizontal, it doesn’t mater what the default is as you can change it to your liking on a per module basis
It’s obvious you can only add 1 poll per thread as how do you count votes per thread ? However perhaps hit discourse’s git with a suggestion
RTFM
If multiple polls are used in a single post (like this one!) each poll will need a unique name or they will not work. When using the poll builder each extra poll will be numbered sequentially, but you can also do this manually by adding name="poll_name" as a parameter:
So bad ui, tbf I have coded forum software and tbf I never would have added a second poll to a thread your adding so many database queries to display the results or if the database is not built that way you may need to use some form of code to split the results from a single query
That was the default for decades. It was changed because pretty strong user experience research indicates labels over the form field is better for users; they can scan the form more rapidly and they fill them out more quickly. We don’t change things in the UI lightly, but sometimes we figure out it was wrong before, so we change it. It was wrong before, it’s better now, in terms of being closer to what research says is optimal.
You may note that all the major tech companies, the ones that can afford to do UX research, put the form label above the form field, almost universally. That’s because they’ve done the research, or at least read the research.
I don’t think either makes a huge difference, of course, and I don’t think we have an ideal UI. But, in this one case, we made a decision based on data and @Ilia put in a lot of effort to make it work and look nice (and also allow you to revert to the old one).
That said, the “everything in a single column” (but with labels over fields) aspect of the horizontal mode is actually what research says is the right thing. I tried to convince Ilia to do that for vertical, but I have failed thus far. He didn’t like how unbalanced it looked…lots of open space on the right.
So, the research says we should have a single column, and the field labels should be directly above the field. We still don’t actually offer the right thing. And, it’s even possible the wrong aspect of Vertical makes it less scannable the the right aspect of Horizontal.
Is what you like about Horizontal that the label is to the left of the field or that there’s only one option per line?
Maybe we can convince Ilia to finally give us what the research says is most usable, I dunno.
So, I still find this not only very impractical and less appealing but also resulting in a worse user experience. I’m open to research results and genuinely believe that having a label above content is undoubtedly the best way to present data. However, having a single column would imply a completely different page layout, which doesn’t seem to fit our current design well.
The double column does not work because a lot of settings are out of context.
A good example is the virtualmin server config settings, and probably a lot of examples in the server template.
Using a single column would also make it easier to add and remove items because you do not have to account
Vertical
on first glance you see features to backup and underneath you see Backup all features is selected so this in this layout implies that the all the settings underneath Virtualmin settings to also backup is included, but they are not.
Yeah, that’s a problem with multiple columns, as well.
I can’t make any good arguments for multiple columns. I don’t really buy (and never have really bought) Ilia’s argument that it’s a problem that you have to scroll for a long form.
That may be an argument that we have too many damned options, but many forms at Google and Microsoft require scrolling and they have boatloads more money than we’ll ever see in our lives. They’ve invested millions in usability, the best we can do is copy them. I can’t come up with any reason to go off-roading, but Ilia maintains Authentic, and can be even more stubborn than I am; he wore me down on this one and I gave up.
Yes, that looks excellent. I use Google Cloud, and though most of their design is different, there is never too much space on the right.
However, I don’t understand how changing it to be the default in Virtualmin will be beneficial or improve the UX. It will just make it fit a standard that Google created.
It would be great if it were easily possible the way you say. Google Cloud has a different layout under the hood, built specifically to fit their own standards.
Well, no problem, I can change that. I will most likely hate it, but if you and @Jamie think it’s better for the project, I’ll do it without hesitation.
Yes, for the new theme, it would be much more realistic. However, creating it would require a considerable amount of work.
Despite that, let’s wait and see what @Jamie thinks!
If we all agree to enable a single-column layout by default, I’ll need to consider how to utilize the empty space on the right. I could automatically display page-specific help tips and links to the documentation site in a new right-side panel when each page loads, making them filterable and searchable. This would be an improvement since the blank space on the right in single-column mode is annoying.
