I figured I would post this here since this board has been pretty busy today and this post is OT for all the boards :) I'm sure somebody has solved something like this already, I just haven't seen it. If anybody knows a better place to fish for an answer, please let me know. Sorry it's rather long...
Our users have to make range choices in two places in this application, and theses two settings are possibly the most used in the entire application. I think the way we are doing it is hard on the eyes and UI space, but the only alternative I've seen is worse. Basically, one setting has 3 sets of option buttons in group boxes. The first group box has 4 radio buttons and it's a very simple selection of 4 mutually exclusive values... * Group 1 *** * * * o Radio 1 * * o Radio 2 * * o Radio 3 * * o Radio 4 * * * ************* The problem is this approach was used for the rest of the stuff. The other 2 group boxes for this first setting have 10 radio buttons each, and they are a range selector. Something like this... * Group 2 *** * Group 3 *** * * * * * o 100 * * o 399 * * o 400 * * o 799 * * o 800 * * o 899 * * o 900 * * o 999 * * o 1000 * * o 1499 * * o 1500 * * o 1549 * * o 1550 * * o 1799 * * o 1800 * * o 2000 * * o 2001 * * o 2100 * * o 2101 * * o 2300 * * * * * ************* ************* This just means you can select anything from 100-399 up to 100-2300 as a range for this setting. It also means if you select 900 as the range start value, the range end values below 900 will be disabled since negative ranges are not allowed. This still isn't that much of a problem, but the last setting is the one that kills me. It's 4 groups: 2 with 8 options and 2 with 25 options. On top of that, the two 25 options steps can be broken down into 4 sub parts by another type of control :) These options are 12 midnight followed by each hour of the day until you get back to 12 midnight, and again it's a start and stop range type setting. The sub parts are the quarter hours, 00 15 30 and 45. Anyway, the point is that it's not pretty IMHO. The other way I've seen it done should be obvious, a bunch of drop down lists. While that makes for a cleaner UI, it's not something that people like to deal with constantly. I thought it would be fine, until I laid out a test application and had to deal with 7 or 8 large drop downs all the time. They are just not that quick or user friendly when it's your primary input method. Anyway I didn't design either approach, I just inherited them and I'm looking to improve on it. Alex =================================== This list is hosted by DevelopMentor� http://www.develop.com Some .NET courses you may be interested in: Essential .NET: building applications and components with C# November 29 - December 3, in Los Angeles http://www.develop.com/courses/edotnet View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://discuss.develop.com
