Questions tagged [controls]

an object used to operate a physical or virtual device. For questions regarding how to present and implement controls for a particular interface or interaction.

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138 votes
15 answers
16k views

Who needs an external on/off Wi-Fi button?

It puzzles me that there are Laptops which are shipped with external physical Wi-Fi buttons. I see no real use of it, but it might have a historical explanation?! The only time one notice the external ...
Benny Skogberg's user avatar
109 votes
13 answers
29k views

Why do showers have "hot" and "cold" knobs rather than "temperature" and "quantity" knobs?

I do not understand the advantage of the popular "hot" and "cold" controls in showers, as opposed to "temperature" and "quantity" controls. Is it simply because the latter option is harder to ...
Zaenille's user avatar
  • 2,817
87 votes
9 answers
18k views

Why is the "Record" icon always round and usually red?

I've been wondering why the symbol for 'record' is universally (AFAIK - has anyone seen exceptions?) a circle and usually red. Cameras, VCRs, voice recorders, smartphones, web apps... I've seen cases ...
Jessica Yang's user avatar
  • 1,995
48 votes
11 answers
32k views

Most User-Friendly Form Fields for Entering Date/Time?

What are the different ways to have fields in an application for date, time, or both? What are the pros and cons for each? The most common seem to be a combination of 2–3 drop-downs, or some form ...
GSto's user avatar
  • 1,684
42 votes
4 answers
19k views

accordions vs tabs

What is difference between accordions and tabs from the UX point of view? This is repost from this thread on SO: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5690589/difference-between-accordion-and-tabs (I ...
Kamil Tomšík's user avatar
37 votes
14 answers
63k views

What's the best way to present date of birth form fields?

I am building a form that requires users to enter in their DOB. What is the best practice for this? I have identified 3 basic options: Free Text Field Users are able to enter day, month and year in a ...
user avatar
31 votes
7 answers
11k views

Greyed-Out vs Invisible

What is a good criterion or rule-of-thumb for determining when a control should be greyed-out and when should it be completely invisible?
Joel B's user avatar
  • 467
31 votes
2 answers
2k views

Why did Microsoft put close and minimize buttons on the Office splash screens?

Starting with Office 2010, Microsoft put a minimize and close button on the upper right corner of the splash screens of the various Office apps. But, the splash screen is up for such a short time, ...
jasonh's user avatar
  • 413
28 votes
3 answers
5k views

Is it acceptable to place video controls at the top of a video?

Is it okay to place video controls at the top of a video? Like so: Mainly considering a full screen video streaming platform like Netflix, I believe this format has some benefits: Subtitles would ...
Woodwoerk's user avatar
  • 433
28 votes
5 answers
8k views

Why don't commercial products use Logarithmic Volume Controls?

Would a logarithmic volume control surprise or shock users? The lowest volume settings on a Mac, or on a YouTube video control the volume in a very heavy handed manner, and once you've turned the ...
Andrew G's user avatar
  • 509
27 votes
13 answers
4k views

Is it better to prevent a forbidden action or display an error/explanation message?

There are multiple examples, so I'll pick a specific one to focus the question. Let's say a user can have specific characteristics (or permissions): Admin, Virtual, External, Financial, etc. To ...
Dan Barak's user avatar
  • 7,762
27 votes
9 answers
8k views

Controlling movement direction in isometric view

In an isometric view, floor tiles would be aligned diagonally. On this view, an entity can be moved to adjacent tiles, as illustrated by the green arrows. Since the movement is diagonal (to the ...
Lars Ebert's user avatar
26 votes
6 answers
3k views

Is there a name for the UI that marks key positions in a scroll bar?

In Chrome, when you do a text search, you'll see the locations of found instances of the text string shown as yellow lines in the vertical scrollbar. If you run Visual Studio with the Resharper ...
mackenir's user avatar
  • 363
25 votes
7 answers
31k views

Why are the controls opposite/inverted when flying in a game?

In a game, we would normally use the directions in a normal way to move, i.e. "up" for move forward, "down" for move backwards, "left" for left, and so on. Although, when we play a flying game, why ...
MacMac's user avatar
  • 405
24 votes
8 answers
12k views

Why do light switches find themselves OUTSIDE the room they light up in some European countries?

Okay, to be fair my experience is mostly with Poland, though I have observed this electrical interior design decision in a few neighboring countries while travelling, but can't generalize there. ...
Marcos's user avatar
  • 361
24 votes
3 answers
8k views

Is there a visual glossary of (Windows) UI controls?

Some days it seems every member of my team calls each control by a different name. Is there a good resource, preferably with images, for what the official name of each control type is? I found a few ...
Yamikuronue's user avatar
  • 1,137
23 votes
3 answers
8k views

Are tri-state checkboxes too complicated?

Normal checkboxes are easy, they have a checked state, and an unchecked state. But how do you go about indicating a third state for a tri-state checkbox? Is it too difficult for the user to discover ...
Matt Rockwell's user avatar
23 votes
3 answers
18k views

Do spinner-based date pickers on iOS & Android detract from the user's experience?

Generally speaking, the rule of thumb on mobile devices is to follow the platform conventions, and that native controls are almost always better than custom UIs. However, I'm at a loss as to whether ...
Daniel Newman's user avatar
20 votes
11 answers
9k views

Scrollbar on the left

Is there a deep study that suggests to place a scrollbar on the right? Personally I move it to the left whenever possible (Firefox allow this, as well as xterm and emacs). I know that placing a ...
Alexander Gromnitsky's user avatar
19 votes
2 answers
38k views

Why does the Xbox controller have non-symmetrical analog sticks?

The image below shows the controllers of the three eighth-generation consoles (Xbox One, PS4, Wii U). As you can see, both the PS4 and Wii U controllers have symmetrical analog sticks, which seems ...
FThompson's user avatar
  • 457
18 votes
10 answers
898 views

Do users like choice? How much should I give them?

I built a photo slideshow web page as an exercise for myself. One thing I found myself doing was adding a Settings button. Clicking this reveals a little settings pane that lets a user choose between ...
Nathan Greenstein's user avatar
18 votes
4 answers
3k views

Should radio options be displayed vertically or horizontally?

For Example: Results must match () All () Any () None Of the search criteria vs Results must match () All of the search criteria () Any () None The ...
Patricia's user avatar
  • 727
18 votes
6 answers
4k views

Select All & Clear All vs. Invert

I met with situation when I have to use the long multiply check list. I have to add some usable buttons Select All, Clear All or Revert Invert. I know that the common practice is using "Select All" ...
igor's user avatar
  • 2,533
17 votes
11 answers
3k views

What's a good scroll bar equivalent for a spiral script?

One of my friends is writing a fictional story about a people who use a script that is read in a spiral from the inside out. They write on long coils of flexible material, and longer texts are fed ...
Peter Olson's user avatar
  • 5,298
16 votes
5 answers
3k views

Appended and Prepended Checkbox: when can I use this?

A was taking a look at Twitter Bootstrap, and, looking at the Prepended and Appended checkboxes, just cant figure out where, why and when I can use it. Can someone give me a good example?
caarlos0's user avatar
  • 323
15 votes
7 answers
1k views

How to incorporate a "never" value on a slider?

I have a slider in a web page (similar to this one) to control the the duration of how long to keep an item before it is removed: The range of values goes from 0 to 90, with the value 0 being used ...
adrianbanks's user avatar
15 votes
3 answers
6k views

Tri-state checkbox: Which state should be selected after clicking?

There is a hierarchy of selectable items, let's say a parent and two children. All three items have checkboxes. When both children are checked, the parent's checkbox is also checked. When both ...
Vitaly Mijiritsky's user avatar
15 votes
4 answers
11k views

Timezone selection best practices

I am looking for ways to design a UI where the user selects their timezone. I would like to avoid having a map as that can be slow people down on small screen devices. I currently have 2 options: ...
F21's user avatar
  • 5,898
14 votes
10 answers
3k views

Alternatives to having an excessive number of radio buttons on a form?

I have a form which dynamically creates the user's choices as radio buttons. It functionally works, but it does not look that pretty. It looks ugly, particularly if the number of radio buttons grows. ...
chack's user avatar
  • 399
14 votes
5 answers
2k views

How to represent a numeric input that is limited to increments of some number

I have a requirement for a form that restricts a field value to fixed increments of 50 and I'm not sure what would be the most elegant way to represent that constraint in a meaningful fashion. The ...
Nathan Taylor's user avatar
14 votes
3 answers
6k views

Indeterminate Progress Indicator Styles

When you have an operation that has too many factors to reliably give an estimate of actual progress towards task completion, you'll often find an indeterminate busy/progress indicator. Through the ...
GotDibbs's user avatar
  • 3,891
13 votes
6 answers
25k views

ExtJS vs. JQuery [closed]

From a UX design perspective (design freedom, interaction polish, usability, skin-ability, etc.), what JavaScript UI framework is best? Particularly, we are looking at ExtJS and JQuery. And, yes, we ...
Jim Jarrett's user avatar
13 votes
5 answers
794 views

Should I use radio buttons or check boxes (or something else) for email address?

So I'm building an application where the users will be able to send some information via email. The previous system had an interface something like this, where the users would select whether they ...
Wayne Werner's user avatar
12 votes
7 answers
2k views

Why do the popular browsers copy each other's user interfaces?

Why do all the popular browsers blatantly copy each other's user interface? See these screenshots to understand what I mean: Mozilla Firefox (see Australis is landing in Firefox Nightly and ...
Toothbrush's user avatar
12 votes
9 answers
2k views

How do you show a locked slider?

I have an application with a slider, but I need to be able to lock the slider, and have it clear to the user that it is locked - simply disabling it is not an option. By locked I mean that you are ...
JohnGB's user avatar
  • 68.4k
12 votes
4 answers
12k views

Positioning Back, Cancel and Next in a full screen wizard

Hi I have a full screen wizard that like many wizards has the back, cancel and next buttons. What is the optimum way of positioning these buttons on the screen? Are there any studies that have ...
Viraj's user avatar
  • 1,113
12 votes
7 answers
2k views

Any examples or suggestions for working with timelines [closed]

I'm going to be writing an application that needs to handle linear work flows. For simplicity, there are two types of entries: Events: A trigger condition that allows you to move forward. It may ...
Jim Rush's user avatar
  • 407
12 votes
2 answers
3k views

TreeTable as a flexible condition/filter editor

I face the task to create condition/filter editor every time I need to develop a data/request/event processing system. As usual, there is no universal one and only solution. Google shows a lot of ...
Renat Gilmanov's user avatar
11 votes
7 answers
7k views

Examples of good user experience design for virtual joystick in mobile or touchscreen games?

Many games for touchscreen mobile devices use virtual joysticks for movement. This has many issues: You can't see/feel where the joystick is pointing when you are using it. You can't feel where the '...
you786's user avatar
  • 612
11 votes
4 answers
1k views

Which one is easier to use: horizontal or vertical sliders?

Which type of sliders is easier to use: horizontal or vertical?
Rajkamal Subramanian's user avatar
11 votes
3 answers
1k views

What is the best control to use to select from a list of thousands of possible options?

I have a field which needs to be populated from a large list of items (many thousands). These items have unique numbers as identifiers, and there can be many thousands of them. (Similar to the way ...
John's user avatar
  • 503
11 votes
3 answers
3k views

How to indicate a text field is autocomplete capable? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: How to tell the user that an input box is autocomplete-enabled? Has anyone come across any kind of visual indicator that suggests a text field will autocomplete? Anything that ...
Gregg's user avatar
  • 219
10 votes
8 answers
821 views

How to make the relationship between two related lists more obvious?

I've got two horizontal lists - one that contains Chinese characters (list A) and the second that contains the decomposition of the selected character (list B). Currently, when the user clicks on ...
laurent's user avatar
  • 3,502
10 votes
3 answers
8k views

What could I use for a tri-state control?

I'm trying to think of a nice element where there are 3 states, but a simple checkbox would be a litlte overkill for what I want (I'd need two), as the states are: Enabled Default Disabled But I ...
Joe Simpson's user avatar
10 votes
8 answers
3k views

Is there ever a good use case for a software rotary knob (dial)?

I love physical dials and knobs, they are great for adjusting something just the right amount without looking at it. They are even great for controlling an absolute value like volume because they stop ...
Steve Moser's user avatar
10 votes
5 answers
1k views

What's a clean way to implement two checkboxes that can be "ANDed" or "ORed"?

I have a pretty standard search form on a web site that will return records based on various criteria. Let's assume each record corresponds with a person. A person can have a dog, a car, neither, or ...
Glenn Arndt's user avatar
10 votes
5 answers
425 views

Is it a good idea to put the word "or" between buttons on a screen

If I have a dialog to display to the user it has a data item displayed, and 2 seperate actions that can be done to the object. So, it's a resource and we want the user to choose which process they ...
sirtimbly's user avatar
  • 2,033
10 votes
1 answer
276 views

How to format UI control screenshots so users don't think they're touchable?

I have a need in a touchscreen mobile app to show users a message that informs them about some system function that they should know might affect my app. As well as describing the issue, I want to use ...
Ben Zotto's user avatar
  • 203
10 votes
2 answers
664 views

What's the official name of concept of input boxes with tags?

I'm looking for an implementation and the (official) name of this kind of control where it's a inputbox where we can add multiple tags into it. By example, it is used in JIRA like this capture (and ...
sgy's user avatar
  • 203
10 votes
1 answer
2k views

Inline editing - does it work on small screens?

I am currently working on an app (phone size, not tablet yet) project that involves an extensive profile editing section. I am generally much in favour of inline editing patterns, as it removes the ...
Andreas Wolters's user avatar

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