IMHO the best option for inputting a small integer value is the combination of a text field and a stepper, which has been around for a long time and has its own name (for touchscreen operation, the +/- buttons could be made larger and horizontally, like the steppers shown): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinner_(computing) For dates, a calendar control would probably be appropriate. I'm a bit puzzled as to why dropdo…
Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort
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Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort
#12There is a small irony that when reading an article about mobile UX, the website has disabled zoom meaning I can't actually see any of the images in the article.
Can't we just let that stuff go and address the article itself?
Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort
#13This is the case for mobile phones. On a desktop or laptop, the dropdowns are preferable because most browsers will let you select the day, month year using your keyboard.
Not only that, but they are text-search using your keyboard too.
Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort
#14IMHO the best option for inputting a small integer value is the combination of a text field and a stepper, which has been around for a long time and has its own name (for touchscreen operation, the +/- buttons could be made larger and horizontally, like the steppers shown): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinner_(computing) For dates, a calendar control would probably be appropriate. I'm a bit puzzled as to why dropdo…
>I'm a bit puzzled as to why dropdowns are a "4 tap operation" Either they count 'moving on' as a tap, or they just assume that on average you scroll at least twice: "First tap the control, then scroll (usually more than once), find & select your target, and finally move on."
Tap to start it scrolling it downward
Tap to stop it scrolling downward
Tap to select the actual item you'd like
edit: Just noticed you were quoting the grandparent comment to this comment, this is addressing that.
Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort
#15Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort
#16Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort
#17There is a small irony that when reading an article about mobile UX, the website has disabled zoom meaning I can't actually see any of the images in the article.
And once again the top comment here is a meta-comment addressing the article formatting rather than the article itself. Can't we just let that stuff go and address the article itself?
Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort
#18There is a small irony that when reading an article about mobile UX, the website has disabled zoom meaning I can't actually see any of the images in the article.
And once again the top comment here is a meta-comment addressing the article formatting rather than the article itself. Can't we just let that stuff go and address the article itself?
But this article is specifically about design for mobile, and it contains a design element that is hostile to mobile use; and we are unable to talk about the content of the article because a lot of it is in the images, which are unreadably small.
It's also a bit disturbing that a comment asking for a wide section of society to not be excluded from some content is met with "just ignore it".
Edit: changed "your" to "some". Also, I don't think parent comment deserves downvotes. I upvoted it.
Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort
#19This really depends on the situation: imagine something as classic as a birthday selector, what would you use for a year selection? The only applicable alternative is a slider control, but such a slider with a 100+ values might be very hard to use with the needed precision. Another common example would be a list of countries (or any long list of words actually), you can't use a slider there, it would be very counter-…
Re: Dropdowns Should Be the UI of Last Resort
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I'm a bit puzzled as to why dropdowns are a "4 tap operation" Either they count 'moving on' as a tap, or they just assume that on average you scroll at least twice: "First tap the control, then scroll (usually more than once), find & select your target, and finally move on."
Tap to bring up the dropdown Tap to start it scrolling it downward Tap to stop it scrolling downward Tap to select the actual item you'd like edit: Just noticed you were quoting the grandparent comment to this comment, this is addressing that.
Always thought this is a one tap (and hold/swipe) operation?