feca-mailshots-plugin/docs/ui_review_2026-04-23.md

UI Design Review (2026-04-23)

Reviewed against requirements/ui_design.md.

Summary

The plugin has improved control alignment/spacing and better internal scrolling on key pages (notably Review Recipients and Download PDF), but several global UI design requirements are still only partially implemented.

Implemented / Largely Implemented

• WordPress admin-page navigation model is used across the plugin.
• Destructive actions use confirmation and red-link/button treatment in most CRUD lists.
• Modal editors generally use Save / Quit and preserve draft state on validation failure.
• Control label/control alignment and spacing were improved on pages with filter/selection controls.
• Long-running feedback is present for Download PDF (progress panel shown on submit).
• Review Recipients provides:
  • full-page recipient inspection
  • filter across fields
  • sort-by + direction controls
  • internal scroll region with sticky header row
  • row highlight selection.

Gaps

1. Standard Page Region Consistency (global)

• Requirement expects consistent context/information/statistics/actions/data pane structure where applicable.
• Current pages use ad-hoc inline layouts with inconsistent region structure and styling.

2. Multi-pane data area splitters

• Draggable splitters with persisted ratios are not implemented.
• No per-page split-ratio persistence exists.

3. Default table behavior: column resizing + persistence

• User-resizable column widths (including Firefox) are not implemented as a shared table behavior.
• Persisted widths per table are not implemented.

4. Resize stability requirements

• Because column-resize behavior is not implemented, the associated non-reload stability guarantees are also not yet implemented/tested.

5. Long-operation progress coverage

• Download PDF has progress feedback, but this is not consistently applied to all operations that may exceed 1s (for example some validate/preview/run flows depending on dataset size).

6. Horizontal scrolling policy

• Requirement says avoid horizontal scrolling when content width can be adjusted.
• Review Recipients intentionally uses horizontal scroll for wide datasets; this is acceptable for usability, but should be documented as an explicit page-level exception to avoid ambiguity.

Recommended Next Steps

1. Introduce a shared admin UI layout helper (PHP render helpers + shared CSS class contract) for pane regions.
2. Introduce a shared table component for:

• edge-drag resize
• width persistence
• sort dropdown + direction wiring where needed.

3. Add a reusable progress-status helper for long-running form/API actions.
4. Add explicit requirement note for Review Recipients horizontal-scroll exception.