Hot answers tagged drop-down-list
28
I use select when the user doesn't need to know all of the alternative choices available. Autosuggest is useful for a long list. Generally, they know what they want and selects save space. Example: Choose a "State" like California or New York. You would never use radio buttons.
I use radio buttons when the alternatives matter. When I want to user to ...
11
Isn't this also a question about granularity? Choose the highest common factor that adds or differentiates value in your service.
For example - does a service actually differentiate between users from Scotland and users from England. If yes, include both. If no, stick to the United Kingdom as in Katie's linked list.
If there is no differentiation between ...
10
There is no recommended maximum number of items to put in a drop down list.
No-one can say the maximum is 7 or 12 or 200 or 10,000 and definitively say that for all scenarios, that is the maximum you should use.
There is a myth for drop down lists and menus that you should not use more than 7 +/- 2 because that's how your memory chunks things, but that's ...
9
Choose a standard and stick by it.
Here is a link to the International Standards Organisation country names and codes. http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/iso_3166_code_lists/country_names_and_code_elements.htm
9
I can think of three approaches for this :
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
With regards to letting the user know at which point the device is unsupported,I would suggest doing it at the earliest so that the customer agent doesn't spend a great deal of time trying to help and then in the end give the response that ...
8
Other than space and the number of options, there really isn't a big difference. One thing I do like about radio buttons is that you can style them to look like large buttons, which can be useful for touch interfaces. If you only have a few options, it would be much easier to push a big button than to push the little dropdown and push the little option.
...
8
In my personal view dropdowns are outdated and quite frankly rather annoying to interact with.
They are
fiddly when opening/closing,
most often they don't provide much help when scanning items,
when combined it is cumbersome to go back a level (e.g. you need to open the Main Heading dropdown again) and
when holding many items, a lot of scrolling back and ...
8
As long as it is clear from your formatting of the links that they are links, you shouldn't have a problem with this.
It is basically a drop down menu, and they are used all over the place without too much of an issue. Additionally you are using verbs in the menu items, so it is clear that selecting one of them will perform an action.
7
I would recommend going for Radio buttons since you just have two items to show and using radio buttons you can show the information up front Instead of having the user click on the dropdown list and then select a language.
To quote what this article on dropdown lists says on when to use to dropdown lists
If there’s anywhere between 7 and 15 options, a ...
7
With this issue I would suggest to always stick with the way that Safari natively renders the drop down menu. This is what Safari users are already use to, and therefore the behaviour they expect. If a user has a screen with high enough resolution to show the whole list in that manner then you are effectively saving them time from having to scroll through a ...
7
The language for this default option would be entirely dependent upon the context.
In general, however, the copy you do use should be unambiguous. It should clearly inform the user what the result of their non-selection will be upon the state of the system.
For example, eBay allows a seller to choose whether they would like to offer shipping insurance to ...
6
From what I understand, You already have the name of the dealership you want to bring up.
This particular UI design approach replicates the physical world way of getting to things. If I want to get to that dealership, how would I? Well, I gotta go to that region, get to the zone, get to the district and then find the dealership. In the physical world, there ...
6
Common practices when dealing with long drop down lists (often lists of countries) include:
Put the most used options at the top of the list. In country lists, that usually means putting the US, UK, etc at the top of the list since most users will want those.
Sort alphabetically. This makes scanning through the list really easy.
Make sure the keyboard can ...
6
For mouse interaction you can use split buttons instead of menu buttons. In the buttons "A", "B", ... above you can choose the pressed or unpressed state. With the drop down buttons below you can choose the attributes.
See microsoft ui guidelines
Example with split buttons (not styled):
Other approach: The selection of the attributes is displayed when ...
6
Radio buttons actually have a very different physical analogy than the paper one you mention:
That's also why they are called radio button.
I don't know who invented the combo box or how he came up with the idea. I don't think that anyone here will be able to state with confidence how the inventor came up with the idea. I do think your statement that ...
6
Menus are a navigation element and so what make the most sense is whatever makes navigation easier for your users.
Your first example is a good menu, as although you have only one item under 'Otters', it wouldn't make sense renaming 'Otters' to 'Sarah' as it would then look like 'Sarah' were a type of animal. Additionally, if you get a second otter to keep ...
5
For the hunting down the list you can check out the answers from Adding USA at the top of dropdown list of countries. OK practice or not?. For example:
automatically copy popular countries to the top of the list
detect the user's location and select that or add it to the top
allow for plain text typing and auto complete countries that match
Also, if you ...
5
One way of doing this is to have radio buttons:
* Existing Item
| Choose item combobox |
* New Item
| Text field to make new item |
You'd disable the the combo box when selecting "New Item" and vice versa.
You could also compact this down to
* Existing Item * New Item
| Combo box OR Text field depending on what's selected |
...
5
If you have nothing else to guide a sorting order, alphabetic makes the most sense. At the very least it creates an affordance for repeated use, where people will likely recall the name of a previously used menu item before learning the position, and if they're asked to select an item from that menu by documentation or another person, they'll be able to find ...
5
Did you see how GMail solved it? I think it's pretty elegant and efficient to use:
No selection / text input:
Text input without match (creates new label on enter):
5
Sounds like you need a list with all the names, plus an on-the-fly search box on top of it, filtering the list below:
When nothing is typed in the search box, it shows all the names below
As the user starts typing, the list is filtered, leaving less and less names
Once the list is filtered enough, I would allow the user to move all the names in the ...
5
Dropdown lists came out of good design, just like radio buttons :). It's not about importing an analogy from the physical world, it's about providing a solution to a design problem. There was a need to let people choose out of a list of options, without having the list take up all your real estate. One solution would be to put the list inside a modal window, ...
4
The only counter I can think of is the order by which the languages are displayed (eg some languages first character changes when you change to it's own). Since this has become quite a standard practice I think that's less of a problem though. Your reasoning seems right and I agree with it.
You could, if needed, include the functionality (link, etc) to show ...
4
Just as food for thought - and I have no idea if this will suit your situation, but you might try considering a completely different approach to the problem. You said this was to let the user choose world regions and countries - how about letting the user interact with more meaningful data like the mock-ups below.
The user simply selects one of 6 or 7 ...
4
The autocomplete suggestion solution is much better. People don't mind filling of text fields They also struggle with drop downs.
EDIT: For example the autocomplete function on http://www.salary.com as the person types in a city a drop down opens that matches all the possible matches. Then the user picks the one they need.
The reason is that the user ...
4
You can easily tell the user's country by their IP address. Therefore there is no excuse to make a user select their country from a long list. The correct country should be selected by default, the state options for that country shown, and if you want, change the field labels (e.g. "ZIP" vs "post code" depending on the country).
4
There is not a standard pattern for a mixture of "live" search and a "live" suggestions/filtered search because they are very similar concepts that probably don't merit being presented in the UI simultaneously.
Perhaps you would better serve your users by following a more conventional "suggestions first" search pattern. Below are some implementations in ...
4
As you've already identified the radio button approach will get unwieldy when there are a large number of possible addresses. It will become increasingly difficult for the user to scan and locate their address. It will also take up a variable amount of space on the screen.
A drop down will occupy the same amount of space on the screen regardless of how many ...
4
Option 2 would be the most straight-forward to implement to keep it usable. It would work for both new users and power users, depending on how you set it up.
As this needs to cater to power users (users whom I assume already know exactly what option they want to select from the form) as well as new users you should still display both the dropdowns (category ...
4
What you are describing is a Combobox and has been in use for as long as I can think about GUIs. The concept has gained new momentum in the web with the further development of dynamic elements and web apps – most notably google's search box with it's suggestions-as-you-type.
Chrome's "Omnibar" is, basically, the same thing: It's a text field you can type in ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
