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Re: combo boxes

for

From: _mallory
Date: Feb 5, 2015 12:25AM

On Wed, Feb 04, 2015 at 07:56:38PM +0000, Andrew Kirkpatrick wrote:
> And it might not always be the first item. For example, if I'm logged into a shopping site so it knows things about me, I might be asked to enter the shipping address for a delivery. Since I live in Massachusetts that option could be selected when the page is rendered, but might still be toward the middle of the list of states in the drop down. If I want to ship a package to a friend in California I'd expect to arrow up to find California in the list.
>
> I might expect to find the same situation in a "select a method of shipping" drop down (or a set of radios for that matter) where free delivery is first and "regular" delivery is second and selected, and overnight delivery is 3rd. There's a logical order to the options, but there is also a logical reason that the site wants me to choose "regular" delivery. I wouldn't view this as an accessibility problem.

Agreed. This is most common in the wild, at least in e-commerce, so
many users already have this expectation-- to the point that in user
testing (like by Nielsen and Baymard), people will actually complain
when the "logical" option isn't pre-selected and the first thing they
focus on, especially if the lists are long.
_mallory