Comments on: Please no more state or country drop-downs

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:52:32 +0000

Just a thought – while you may know your state abbreviation, not everyone may know it or may even get it wrong (hopefully the zip check will catch it though). After all 16 of the 50 states begin with M and N (not including “possessions” MH or MP) and I have trouble remembering the abbreviations for them all (quick tell me: ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, MS, MO, and MT). In past applications, I have put the abbreviation first and then the name: NE – Nebraska, NV – Nevada, etc. When used in combination with a type-ahead combo, it works nicely.

/rjvs

By: JAmes avery

JAmes avery — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:11:40 +0000

Brian,
I have used controls like that before but I still prefer just a two character box. Typeahead is usually a little slow and not every site does it.

-James

By: Brian Sherwin

Brian Sherwin — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 08:58:39 +0000

James:

That’s why I created that DropDown TypeAhead control as a demo when I spoke to the Cinci .NET User Group. Weren’t you there?

Check it out on codeplex:
http://www.codeplex.com/ProjectRapiers

By: jayson knight

jayson knight — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:58:27 +0000

@Steve beat me to it…in fact, I usually do a lookup off of just a zip; there are plenty of free services that can be tapped into to do this.

By: Ben Carey

Ben Carey — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:41:00 +0000

I completely agree with you. Why not take it a step further? Why not just one big text box?

I liked Jeff's example at www.codinghorror.com/.../000532.html.< />
I mean come on, how hard is it to parse this stuff out (especially if there is good contextual guidance)? Sure there are issues, but I bet we could get it right 90% of the time (if the postal service can do it, why couldn't we?). If we can't parse it, then we could return a more structured view (or something less natural).

By: Michael K. Campbell

Michael K. Campbell — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:35:57 +0000

Yeah, I'm all for improving usability. But you can't sacrifice the quality of your data.

Billions and billions of $ go into 'cleaning' poorly collected address data every year.

Personally, I'd recommend the best of both worlds where possible: just collect a zip code (for US residents) and be done.

By: Steven Harman

Steven Harman — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:34:41 +0000

Well, since the other Steve beat me to the punch, I'll just give him a +1 for lookup the State and Country based on the zip code.

And he gets bonus points for using geo-location to guestimate the user's zip off the bat!

By: Brian H. Madsen

Brian H. Madsen — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:21:14 +0000

Hey James, in one aspect i agree with you – in another i don’t..

data is only useful if it’s accurate..

with that in mind, i do admit that not all developers has brains enough to figure out that if you have a “country” dropdown list that’s mandatory, then you definitely need a “state/region” list that’s flexible (add “other”???) and don’t do the typical stupid thing and validate the zip code/postcode after the US only.

Oh, and get the order right – country should come before “state/region” if there’s a dependancy.

I don’t know how many forms i’ve filled out that hasn’t had a “other” option in the “state/region” list and i’ve had to enter “New York” or something while selecting “Australia” in the country dropdown.

Regardless, a better solution these days is simply to use AJAX to populate the box by filtering. So you start to write “West…” and it’ll filter to “West Guinea, West Zimbabwe, West Australia” as you type…that’s what AJAX is for

By: JAmes avery

JAmes avery — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:09:01 +0000

Tim,
I guess I wasn't clear enough in the post, but I would still do the correct validation and even store it as a lookup in the database. I am just saying from a UI perspective it is much easier to type in two letters than deal with the drop down.

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:06:39 +0000

@Jason has the right idea. We get a lot of evaluational form downloads which we have to tie sales people’s region, I can only guess the nightmare if it was a free flow. I have a feeling Meiraware made his abstract enough to deal with Purchase Order and how things on invoices have to match.