andjsch
commented
5 months ago Thanks for your input. I have heard that forms are about to get some polish in the upcoming v5 and @jackmcdade himself said to rethink them currently in one of the community calls 👍🏽
But I do agree, they are currently a bit weird and do not behave the same as the rest of the eco system. My biggest wish would be to have separate forms for each site. Currently they are installation wide, which can make sense, but sometimes doesn't. What if a contact form needs different fields for another site, what if the mail address for submissions changes for another site? This is currently only possible to handle via workarounds.
Another thing that would be cool: Add the ability to let users change form blueprints / fieldsets. I know this works already, but I wished we had form fieldsets. This can be very useful for users who make a lot of forms. Not only would it limit the choice in the blueprint builder, to only include fieldsets that make sense and users would be able to organize their forms better > it shouldn't be possible to add fieldsets of Globals and Collections to a form (think of the fields that simply cannot be in a form...)
rachelmflowers
One of the main reasons I chose Statamic over several other CMS systems is the fact that it has forms built-in. However, after building a number of sites with the CMS, the forms module is actually one of the things about Statamic that I like the least.
The main reason for that is that I find the UX to be a bit confusing. Which has become a more urgent problem since separate permissions for blueprint editing have been introduced a while ago, which gives my users the ability to edit forms.
I want to tread carefully here. I realize that I'm new to the community, and criticizing the results of a lot of hard work by others. Still, I do see room for improvement.
Submissions should not be first
When a user clicks a form in the CP, the first thing they see is the submissions made on that form. I think this is not ideal. The list of submissions is treated like an inbox. But in my opinion, it should be treated more like a log.
I mean, if a form's submissions are relevant to admins, an email notification has probably been set up, so they have already received the submission in their actual inbox. The submission list in Statamic is only needed to make sure no submissions get lost, or to debug forms. Which is, indeed, more like a log.
Assuming that is true, if a user clicks a form, what do they most probably want to do? Do they want to see the submissions? Or do they want to modify the form? I think the latter is far more likely. Which leads me to the next point.
The blueprint should be first
Whether it's Google Forms, Microsoft Forms, Formie for Craft, Gravity Forms for WordPress, or Form Builder for ProcessWire, they all put the field editor first. I believe that is because they recognize that editing a form's fields is the action that is performed most often.
In Statamic, depending on how I do it, I always need several clicks to get to the blueprint editor. The quickest way is via the ellipsis menu in the forms list, but many users will miss that, click the form title, and end up in its submissions list. I forget it myself all the time.
On top of that, in the general form settings, the link to the blueprint editor is very subtle, and easily overlooked.
Considering this, I'd like to see the blueprint editor first when I click a form, rather than the submissions list.
A single view with four tabs
So here's my five cents about how to improve this. I'd like to see the forms editor reduced to a single view with four tabs:
The order matters here, so Fields is the first tab which is open by default.
Note that I called it 'Fields', not 'Blueprint'. I understand what a blueprint is, but my users don't.
I think this will enable me and my users to edit forms with less clicks and confusion.
But...
Anticipating a discussion about this (which I hope for), I have thought about a number of objections people might have to this proposal.
Putting the blueprint editor in the same view as the other settings is inconsistent with the rest of the Statamic UI. True. But given the fact that users can now edit forms, I think having a simpler and friendlier UI is more important than absolute consistency here. The blueprint editor is mainly separate because entries can have more than one blueprint (assumption, correct me if I'm wrong here), but that's not the case for forms.
Customers never edit forms. Mine do. Especially people who come from the WordPress ecosystem are used to plugins that allow them to do it, and are built for non-technical users.
This will take a lot of work. I fully realize that, and I'm happy to help wherever I can, later this year, when I have the time 😅. No seriously, if this is something that would be considered, I am willing to invest time into making it happen.
Sorry for the lengthy post. Because this is a fairly big change, it needs a rationale, I think.