5 replies to this topic

[BASHERS33]

Do I have to add something to the html of a dropdown (a regular select box/input) for there to be scrollbars if the list gets huge?

When I use <select><option></option></select> if there are a lot of choices will it make the list go off the screen or will it automatically have the scrollbars?

So far I have not added a lot of data to test it, but in many cases it's going to have several hundred choices in it (at this point I don't have many options other than that. Maybe later I will figure out how to do auto-suggest and thus not need a huge list in a dropdown) and I haven't seen it have scrollbars when I am using around 20 choices.

Many sites which have you enter a year from a dropdown of years have scrollbars on the dropdown. So is that done automatically by the browser or did they add an attribute to the select box html?

[WingedPanther]

The appearance of a dropdown is browser dependent. It also depends on the size of the browser window.

[BASHERS33]

ok, thank you.

This form is going to be so bad it's depressing, but I have to hurry and get it done and then can change it later. It's going to have way too many dropdowns and way too many choices. Sigh.

[BASHERS33]

lol since this form has a whopping 65 dropdowns I did a loop of dummy data to put 1,000 choices in each one just to get an idea how horrible it would be and it wasn't THAT horrible considering the form would rarely be used, is only for staff, and 1,000 would be a high end number of choices. It took about 6 seconds for the page to load, but I can't see anybody using the form more than a time or two per year anyway so not like an extra 12 seconds per year would end the world. Still annoying I have that many dropdowns though.

[WingedPanther]

One thing: if they are sorted, you can probably start typing your option and get in the vicinity of the option you want.

[BASHERS33]

Thanks. I actually forgot that. I am used to using the mouse to select things, but that will be a good tip for anyone using them (including me) later on when they do have a lot of info. They are indeed alphabetically sorted.

I was more worried about just how simply messy it is having that many dropdowns. Each dropdown has the SAME choices too, so there may be a more ideal way to do this, but I'm not sure and in a hurry to finish and optimize later.

One thing about typing a letter though, when I press tab it's going to the next cell in the same row when the most logical way to do these particular selections is go down an entire column first.

The only way I can think of to change that is make only one row and then have the dropdowns as a list in each cell so then it would go down the list before going to the next cell. But it would certainly look worse (I think it would, anyway) if I have them set up that way.

Blah and now that I think about it, it still wouldn't be too ideal that way either. Because there actually would be 2 rows of 2 cells, not one. So it would be doing them in a bad order that way also.

No matter what order it goes in if the person is paying attention they will know what to do, but it won't be ideal at all. Ahhhhhhhhhh. Another option would be to select everything from one of those 4 groups, then click submit, then the second, and so on. But then it turns the form into a 4 part form rather than one form you click submit once on.