Re: notes on combo boxes

[Guy Harris <gharris flashcom net>]

On Fri, Aug 04, 2000 at 10:10:23AM -0700, Guy Harris wrote:
> Well, that widget *somewhat* resembles one of MacOS's "Standard Pop-Up
> Menus":
> 
> 	http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/mac/HIGuidelines/HIGuidelines-91.html#HEADING91-0
> 
> although MacOS pop-up menus use a triangle pointing down, rather than
> that horizontal thing, as the indicator that there's a menu hiding
> there.

MacOS 8 appears to call them "pop-up menu buttons", and to use a
spinbox-style up-triangle plus down-triangle indicator:

http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/mac/HIGOS8Guide/thig-14.html#HEADING14-0

and MacOS X appears to call them "pop-up buttons" and to use the same
indicator (see the "Adopting the Aqua Interface" document under

	http://devworld.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/macosx.html

).

The indicator on them may do a better job of suggesting that the widget
has a menu under it, but I don't know whether it

	1) is driveable from the main keyboard (*NOT* just from the
	   arrow keys - if some Web form wants me to specify which US
	   state I live in, I want to be able to type "c" one or more
	   times to put "CA" in there, I don't want to have to hit the
	   down arrow key to go through all the "A"s first);

	2) handles the Really Long List problem well.

> On the other hand, I seem to remember reading *somewhere* a critique of
> either combo boxes in general, or non-editable combo boxes; I forget
> what it said, but I'll see if I can find it.

I couldn't find it in the places I thought it might be - Alan Cooper's
*About Face* likes the combo box, and none of the Web sites I had
bookmarked that seemed like candidates had a combo box critique in any
obvious place.