Re: "Why would an always displayed list be better than a popuplist?"

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Darin wrote:

> If the list box has more items than can fit on screen, and thus has a scroll
> bar, and you need to scroll to choose the item, then scrolling to the item
> and then selecting it in the list box requires more user interaction than a
> choosing an item from a popup menu.

Very true, I was attempting to compare a listbox with a dropdown
list/combo in this case.  

Having said that, think of the now-standard "Choose your country"
control that you find on many websites these days, which most Mac and
Solaris web browsers render as a massive popup menu. Speaking as someone
who regularly has to fight down to the third or fourth level of cascade
(on Solaris) or scroll reeaallly slowly (on Mac) to get down to
"Ireland", navigating around a popup menu with many more menu items than
will fit on the screen is still more of a navigation nightmare than the
equivalent list-with-scrollbars would be.

(The Mac control at least allows you to focus it and press 'I', which
gets you to Iceland, but unfortunately repeated pressing of 'I' doesn't
cycle through all the entries starting with 'I', so you still end up
having to pop up the menu...)

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems