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Re: radio buttons, vertical vs horizontal

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From: Chagnon | PubCom
Date: Oct 4, 2012 12:41PM

As a graphic and interface designer, I recommend stacked vertically radio
buttons and checkboxes.
Sighted humans are conditioned to scan top-to-bottom in a document (whether
printed or on screen).
If you place a series of radio buttons or checkboxes horizontally, the user
could skip past some of the options to the right, especially if there is a
wide gap of white space between them.
I just had this happen to me in an online form I filled out yesterday. Never
saw the other checkboxes on the far right of the screen because I didn't
scroll left/right in the browser.

Jakob Neilsen's group has some statistics to back up the top-to-bottom eye
movements if you need some official research on this.

-Bevi Chagnon

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