Ideas about an integrated Poll System
Even if it is easy to get an open source polling system from the web, it would be better to have a Wikka integrated solution.
Requirements
- any Wikka user can create a poll by defining dedicated WikkaPages (handler?)- the questions can be:
- Optional or Mandatory (cannot validate the vote if not answered)
- Dependant on previous answers (If Country="USA" then State dropdown list is used)
- open question (answers expected in a textarea)
- closed question (radio button, dropdown list...) allowing a single answer or multiple answers
- nice to have would be editable dropdown list as an alternate capability
- the answers would be stored in a dedicated DB where would be stored:
- Poll name (WikkaPage)
- User name (names of the users who answered)
- The answers (in a single field separated by a separator so that the same DB could be used whatever the poll)
- Perhaps easier would be to gather the answers in an associative array and simply store the serialized array in a database column. serialize() and unserialize() will then do all the formatting and parsing for you. --JavaWoman (who once started to write her own polling application but never finished it)
- A timestamp (when the answer has been validated)
- Everyone
- Only those who voted (will require a dynamic management of the ACLs: DynamicAcls)
- A group of people (only the poll creator, a project team...)
There is actually a third option with no particular requirements whatsoever both on the server-side (no GD needed) and on the client-side (no Flash support needed - and nope: it's not a question of dislike, but *accessibility*).
The third way consists in having PHP print plain html with "image-bars" resized to the appropriate length. The only thing you need is a pixel-sized image and some code to scale it to a given value using standard img attributes.
No GD, Flash, client-side support whatever needed, just a decent browser. :)
@DarTar - Why is "accessibility" an issue with flash for you (and presumably others)? The flash plugin is accessible, and the most commonly used browsers (IE, FireFox, Opera, Netscape) are all supported. Looking for insight....
Flash is a major accessibility issue though. It's not that the *plugin* is not "accessible", but that Flash *content* is not accessible except in rare cases, and only on a particular platform. It takes a great deal of effort (and exceptional expertise) to create accessible Flash content that is equivalent with what can easily be done with HTML + CSS. In general, most Flash "movies" don't support keyboard navigation, invent their own controls such as buttons and scrollbars that behave differently from those the browser supplies, and it isn't easy to provide alternative text (let alone localize it!) as can be done with an image and alt text in the img tag. And if you don't need interactivity (you certainly don't to present poll results!) and image will do just nicely, and plain HTML + CSS is even better and more accessible (no need to provide a long description to describe the stats in the graph when the data can be siimply presented with just HTML).
Thanks for the description of the accessibility issues with Flash. I don't at all disagree that in the case of Polls that HTML+CSS is probably a better alternative. (although I do think a bar/pie option should exist....probably a bias from my research on how people interpret graphs and what contributes to their interpretations of the data and improves their competency at it ;) )