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Chosen: A javascript plug-in that makes long select boxes user-friendly.

harvesthq.github.com

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Re: Chosen: A javascript plug-in that makes long select boxes user-friendly.

#21

Post by Martijn »

colinr wrote: post #18
pilif wrote: post #12

And yet another control that pretends to be a dropdown box, but isn't. No. I'm not complaining about the appearance or the fact that it has a search field while the real dropdown doesn't. I'm complaining about the way it responds to mouse actions: The real dropdown box, on my machine, expands the menu on mouse down after a no-doubt OS-specific delay. The fake dropdown doesn't - it only reacts on mouse up. Of course,…

Looks fantastic, but here's another feature it doesn't have which makes it feel less native. Try mouse scrolling too far whilst the menu's options are open/visible. The parent page scrolls as well when you reach the start/end. This doesn't happen with a normal select menu. I wonder if there's a way to do an event.preventDefault() on the mouse scroll event when reaching the end of the list?

FF on Mac actually tries to do something clever here. It won't start scrolling the page itself until after a small delay or until you move the mouse.

Re: Chosen: A javascript plug-in that makes long select boxes user-friendly.

#22

Post by camiller »

systemizer wrote: post #14
pilif wrote: post #12

And yet another control that pretends to be a dropdown box, but isn't. No. I'm not complaining about the appearance or the fact that it has a search field while the real dropdown doesn't. I'm complaining about the way it responds to mouse actions: The real dropdown box, on my machine, expands the menu on mouse down after a no-doubt OS-specific delay. The fake dropdown doesn't - it only reacts on mouse up. Of course,…

My problem with this is that when I see the box (e.g. Multiple Select), I perceive it as a text input. I'd be ill-surprised to discover on a site to (all of a sudden) have this protruding box appear out of nowhere. Better solution: on mouse click, hide the box. Only show the box for autocompletes.

When we do this (with jQueryUI) we add the little down arrow button decoration so you expect the dropdown to appear.

Re: Chosen: A javascript plug-in that makes long select boxes user-friendly.

#23

Post by bilban »

skrebbel wrote: post #4

Excellent. Makes you wonder why browser vendors never improved on the usability of such controls themselves.

I'd rather my OS (desktop theme) be left to take care of the controls, which at least lends to better consistency than a myriad of different browser and site implementations.

Re: Chosen: A javascript plug-in that makes long select boxes user-friendly.

#25

Post by gpambrozio »

geuis wrote: post #13

This nearly completely breaks the select ui on iOS. It should do some kind of feature detection so that it can disable itself on browsers that have alternate ui's for controls like this. For example, this converts a select menu to an input field. On iOS the keyboard comes up instead of the select control.

Didn't test on the iphone but on the ipad if you expand one control and then click on another it will keep both expanded. Click on a third and now you'll have 3 expanded. Looks weird. Also, +1 to try to replicate the native look, maybe just adding a down arrow. Good job otherwise.

Re: Chosen: A javascript plug-in that makes long select boxes user-friendly.

#26

Post by KevinKaske »

gorm wrote: post #9

Does anyone know if it's compatible with formalize.me? Does it work well on android/iphone?

Technically it works ok on the iPhone. From a UX standpoint it's not that good. It's completely different from a native iPhone drop down control. I don't know that there is anything that the developer can really do about it. IMHO I would use a JavaScript check to make sure that mobile clients use the native controls and everyone else uses this plugin.

Re: Chosen: A javascript plug-in that makes long select boxes user-friendly.

#27

Post by jsavimbi »

philfreo wrote: post #17

This project looks awesome. This stuff is annoying to have to replicate yourself, and I'm glad to see MooTools support as well. That said, my first reaction when looking at the first Country dropdown example was that I liked the native one better since in OS X it shows me dozens of choices at once (fills most of the screen vertically) and then in the "after" suddenly I was constrained to only seeing 7 countries at a…

> Apple did a good job with s on iOS and this completely breaks it.

Agreed. Also, when a user has to access both your desktop and mobile apps, the experience has to be the same. This plugin, however nice, is trying to solve a problem by further modifying the problematic feature. Just remove the select if your list is too long; there should really only be a handful of options contained within. As a rule, I keep it to five and I never replace the pseudo element with plugins.

Re: Chosen: A javascript plug-in that makes long select boxes user-friendly.

#28

Post by powrtoch »

geuis wrote: post #13

This nearly completely breaks the select ui on iOS. It should do some kind of feature detection so that it can disable itself on browsers that have alternate ui's for controls like this. For example, this converts a select menu to an input field. On iOS the keyboard comes up instead of the select control.

This just seems like a matter of preference to me. It works on iOS pretty much just like it works on a desktop. It may be that some iOS users would prefer the native UI, but you could say the same for some desktop users (particularly keyboard-wary ones). I certainly wouldn't call anything "broken".

Re: Chosen: A javascript plug-in that makes long select boxes user-friendly.

#29

Post by piquadrat »

So... why don't they use this thing on their own web app? The "Project / Task" select box becomes very unwieldy with a growing client base. I spend way too much time looking for the correct project almost every time I have to create a new entry.

Re: Chosen: A javascript plug-in that makes long select boxes user-friendly.

#30

Post by philfreo »

powrtoch wrote: post #28
geuis wrote: post #13

This nearly completely breaks the select ui on iOS. It should do some kind of feature detection so that it can disable itself on browsers that have alternate ui's for controls like this. For example, this converts a select menu to an input field. On iOS the keyboard comes up instead of the select control.

This just seems like a matter of preference to me. It works on iOS pretty much just like it works on a desktop. It may be that some iOS users would prefer the native UI, but you could say the same for some desktop users (particularly keyboard-wary ones). I certainly wouldn't call anything "broken".

It's broken. When I tapped it the element the dropdown part of it didn't come up on the screen. The only way to scroll inside it is to do the 2 finger scroll, which 90% of users wouldn't know how to do (since normally you do a 1 finger).

On the desktop the element still feels like a . On the iPhone it feels nothing at all like a

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