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Re: State Abbreviations in Dropdown - Permitted?

for

From: Rimantas Liubertas
Date: Dec 3, 2005 12:20PM

<...>
> In addition, I, as someone who has indifferent and varying motor
> control, find long drop-down lists can be a big nuisance on days when
> my muscles do what they want to, not what I want them to. Give me a
> text box every time!
<...>

Seth Godin rises interesting point in his "Big Red Fez" book, namely,
if someone is filling a form, he keeps both hands on the keyboard, and
drop downs are usually operated with mouse, so selecting item from drop
down requires additional action.

Quote:
===="You type your name. Your street address. Your city. Then,
suddenly, there's a pull-down menu asking you to choose
your state. And finally, another menu for the country. You
have to scroll through Afghanistan, Lichtenstein, Oman --
but don't get to Zanzibar, that's too far--and then you see
United States. Hey, even if United States is at the top of
the list, it's till a few extra seconds for no reason at all.
Why not just ask the person to type NY and US?
Because the engineers love using pull-down menus!
Take them out. Make it easy for the user and a little harder
for the database"
=== end of quote==
I may happen to know more keyboard shortcuts than
99.9% of web users, but I still operate drop-downs with
a mouse (sometimes it is just difficult to get to the right
dropdown using keyboard, because of illogical tabbing order).

Regards,
Rimantas
--
http://rimantas.com/