New answers tagged combobox
2
I think that this is new ground without a consensus yet. For example, Wikipedia doesn't mention this on its GUI Widgets list.
You've got the ASP.NET "Autocomplete Textbox". I think that name works, but is not completely clear as to whether the textbox accepts multiple values or not.
If you allow new values to be entered, "autosuggest textbox" may be good ...
1
This is a tough question that is very much dependent on the proficiency of your user and the type and importance of the information being requested. That said, I have found a few things to be true in testing.
It is usually not a great idea to have a default selected unless you are very certain that the overwhelming majority of users want that option. Most ...
1
You can disable one of the combo-box until a selection is made and you can populate the second combo-box.
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
2
There is no such thing as "one solution to fit em all" for this case (as probably there is no such thing as universal solution for many other problems in UX design). My advice is never to combine comboboxes though - it is messy and misleading.
You need to think about what do you want your user to achieve. Next try think about what you try to achieve.
Lets ...
1
It's a good practice to use default values in dropdowns. If you can guess or preselect one of the options the user won't need to select it him or herself.
In other cases you maybe won't know which is a good default or maybe for political reasons you would prefer not to preselect it. In these cases I would recommend using radio buttons when possible (this ...
1
It becomes difficult to detect and handle the failure mode wherein a user forgets to make a selection, if the default option is a valid selection. As an example, many forms asking you to choose a state would get submitted with AK (Alaska), the first by alphabetical order.
17
A dropdown list (or combobox) should already be a clear indication that you need to select an item from there, so wasting the first item by telling someone this is redundant and a poor idea.
The only times that I would recommend having some other text in the dropdown are:
when it is not essential to select an item
when you want effectively to select ...
4
Long lists or where unavailable options don't matter
When you have long lists, or where unavailable options don't matter, you can simply leave them out.
Airline flight booking is an example of this. If I chose a starting point, I only care what my possible destinations are, and so this is far better than a list of all possible destinations with everything ...
1
Combining comboboxes is only a good solution if there is a very limited, static set of items. Say you had three options: Print -> To File, Print -> To Printer, Don't Print. Two comboboxes (print/no, file/printer) is a bit of a waste there. But if there is a large number of possible options a single combobox largely becomes unweildy as you have to list all ...
0
if its a form, my opinion would be to show compatible values in the 2nd/output drop down..
just imagine if there are 20-25 values in the 1st dropdown and 40-45 values in the 2nd/output dropdown..
you can see one good example here: http://www.acer.co.in/ac/en/IN/content/drivers
, you can consider this option too.
3
Grey out the invalid/not-available options in the output field.
It is similar to the contextual menus we are so used to. Just make sure the user is aware of the relation between the two combo-boxes.
Inthe mockup, C is selected for input and correspondingly, 1 and 4 are disabled in output.
When you grey out the options, they are still visible, but, ...
Top 50 recent answers are included
