Check vs Select

Posted by Gregg on June 17, 2008 in Web 2.0 |

Working on an survey like application and came to a head scratcher. When some one is instructed to select one item from a list, should the question be presented as a select box, or radio buttons. There is much that goes into the decision.

Radio button method always presents the choices on the screen, which is nice, unless there are 100+ choices. Select saves some screen room but unless the choices are sorted in a logical manner(alphabetically, etc) then finding your choice is not always intuitive. So after a bit of Googlin’ I’ve decided that for items less than 10 (radio), over 10 (select - but pay mind to the sort).

A good resource I came across:
Jakob Nielsen - http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040927.html - point 8.

Will report back if feedback is good or bad.