I am working on a web application and the advanced search goes through a number of records and returns them for the user. There are fields and filters that are specific to the item type. Currently These items are disabled until the user selects the item type but this seems to be confusing the users. The rationale is that if they are searching by a specific type of item then the search should be limited to those types. There are a couple of use cases where a user would be searching for multiple item types but also filter within those types to get a list of all those items.
Questions:
- Should the subset fields (below "Type C name, Type B/C subsets) be disabled?
- Are the cues I can give the user to help them understand that the selection triggers the behavior of the other fields?
- Is there a better way to accomplish this?