yes/no field: combo box or radio button?

[vermon]

This question is pretty dumb, but I am wondering what do you people prefer
to use for a conceptual "yes/no" field: a combo box or radio buttons? My
goal is the simplest possible to read GUI with many "yes/no" fields.

Thanks.

 

[Andreas Håkansson]

vermon,

My initial rection was "checkbox" but then I started thinking and
realized
that using radiobuttons can be a powerful visual aid as well. I guess it all
comes down to where you are going to use it (context such as settings page,
wizard etc) and who your target audience is.

One other factor is space - not only for the control it self, but for the
associated
text - specially if you are supporting localization where you should reserv
about
30% more space when the english text uses.

If you use a checkbox you would phrase it like this "Activate/Use feature x"
and
if you were to use radio buttons you would phrase it "Should feature x be
activated/used".

HTH,

//Andreas

 

[Morten Wennevik]

Hi vermon,

For yes/no I would probably use a CheckBox, checked meaning yes. It would
depend on the design though. In some cases where you could put the
RadioButton pairs as a vertical column I would consider it, but I don't
think ComboBoxes is a good solution. It's very difficult to see at a
glance what the value is.

Happy coding!
Morten Wennevik [C# MVP]

 

[Knut Vonheim]

I use check boxes where a checked is Yes.

I use radio buttons when there are multiple, mutually exclusive choices i.e.
mono, stereo, surround sound, etc.

Cheers,
Knut

 

[Charles Conlow]

This question is pretty dumb, but I am wondering what do you people prefer
to use for a conceptual "yes/no" field: a combo box or radio buttons? My
goal is the simplest possible to read GUI with many "yes/no" fields.

Thanks.

Is it Yes/No? Then the underlying property is a (bool) and the cultural
responses are Yes/No, Oui/Non, respective...

Is it **Anything Other Than YES/NO**, then you will enumerate the possible
responses, and accept choices from a list as 1) Yes 2) No 3) Maybe 4) Blue
5) Tomorrow...

Do you have several YES/NO queries? Then present them in a logical fashion
such that you MAY choose a) and you may choose b) and you might also choose
c) but your MAY NOT choose a) and c)...

GroupBox() the choices, TabOrder() those GroupBoxes() and programmatically
restrict choices...

GUI is not hard, but it might often be art


Charles