Question editing form improvements

Introduction

Many question type editing forms are long and unwieldy. The biggest improvements we made were

1. Expandable Sections
2. Group similar fields.
3. Expandable html editors

Combined with smaller tweaks the forms are now much easier to understand and use.

Expandable Sections

This is the ability for the user to collapse and expand form sections.

Summary

Each form is broken down into logical sections including:

1. General
2. Answers
3. Units
4. Multiple tries

To simplify the form it helps to think of breaking it down into sections and focusing on one section at a time. This is what expandable sections allow. Each section of the form can now be collapsed or expanded exactly the same way this happens to blocks.

To the left of each section title a + or - icon controls the visibility of that particular section. The icon used indicates what will happen when it is clicked. - indicates the section will collapse. + indicates it will expand.

Fig 1. All sections collapsed With all sections collapsed it's possible to see on one page all sections in the form and gauge its complexity.

Fig 2. Sections expanded You can expand only the sections you want to see. The answers section often takes up one or two screens. So it's collapsed here.

Required Sections

Collapsing a section can hide required form fields. So required sections are marked with *

Fig 3. Required section collapsed This section contains a required field so a * appears after its title.

Fig 4. Required section expanded Expanding the section reveals the required field.

Logic

We could collapse all sections when the form loads but this wouldn't be very helpful. So we've added some additional logic to set the form up for easy editing straight away.

Remembers section visibility

the collapsed or expanded state of each section is remembered for example if the answers section was collapsed last time you used a question editing form it will be collapsed for the next question editing form. The type of question doesn't matter.

Default to expanded

Remembering section visibility can cause issues. Particularly if sections with required fields or error are collapsed. You may not realise why you're having problems submitting a form.

To prevent this problem all sections are expanded by default. They will also be expanded if they contain empty required fields or fields with errors.

always expanded sections

Regardless of previous user preference the 'General' section it will always load expanded

always collapsed sections

If no user preference is recorded the 'Combined feedback' section will load collapsed.

Expandable html editors

For 'small' HTML editor, the HTML editor starts with the editing toolbar hidden:

You can click to reveal it if necessary: