An oldie but a goodie - Taming Lists

First published in 2002, 'Taming Lists' on A List Apart is still the best article on styling lists with css. Everytime I need to style a list I find myself referring to this article.

http://alistapart.com/articles/taminglists/

Radio buttons vs Combo/Dropdown boxes

Something that really annoys me is the mis-use of radio buttons vs dropdown/combo/option boxes in user interfaces.

A lot of the time, people think putting a dropdown in place instead of a radio button is more 'usable' because it takes up less space. I disagree in some situations....

In my opinion, dropdowns should be used when the options in the dropdown follows a sequental pattern of some kind - ie dates, months, placenames, counters, booleans, phone number type (mobile/home/work) etc.

Where they shouldnt be used is when each option doesnt nicely fit a sequence, or the user can't 'guess' straight away what option to select - ie when selecting different 'states' (I can't come up with a really good example right now!) which will ususally require the user having to select the dropdown and reading through each option before they can determine what to put in.

I guess my reasoning here is if the dropdown contains options that aren't obvious what they will be, everytime someone hits that page, they may have to select the dropdown anyway to be able to scan the available options, and make sure they HAVE got the right one.

I must see if anyone has some data on this already...

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