[whatwg] Re: Another alternative to select editable

[Jim Ley]

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 21:04:49 +1000, voracity <subs at voracity.org> wrote:
> > On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 20:27:21 +1000, voracity <subs at voracity.org> wrote:
> >> Perhaps you could add another tag called something like 'combo' (or something
> >> better),
> >
> > It won't degrade in other clients, to anything, meaning it can't
> > realistically be used.
> 
> I just explained how it degrades in other clients. I can create a web page for
> you to visit that shows precisely how it degrades in today's clients, if you wish.

Oh sorry, I misread your example, I think this is equivalent to the
fieldset proposal, just using a new element, rather than an attribute
on fieldset, I don't see anything wrong with it either, Last I read
Ian was "looking at it", but heard nothing since.

> I have a similar sales entry form I developed for my intranet where the user is
> able to select an entry from one of 8000 clients (with my own combobox
> equivalent). It takes all of 2 seconds (and 4 keypresses) to locate a client,
> most times. If you can explain how I can make this 'better designed', I'd
> appreciate it --- believe me, I appreciate how every fraction of a second counts.

If you can "search" reliably to it, then do that, you just need a text
box and a search mechanism, perhaps divide it into categories, or
similar, but navigating a drop down list with 1000's of elements in is
generally not very usable (keyboard users often can use it reasonably
efficiently, but we shouldn't sacrifice the work in.) If you look at
most UI guides they don't suggest using combo boxes for more than you
have to scroll to get to, scrolling is too difficult a function AIUI.

Jim.