Dropdown with Multiple Selections?

[richmond62]

I am typing this on a computer that has a 3 button mouse connected to it.

[FourthWorld]

I am typing this on a computer that has a 3 button mouse connected to it.

Like Doug Engelbart's mouse in 1968.

The 3-button convention popular among researchers at SRI eventually became the standard for Unix systems, so widely used that when MetaCard was born in 1992 its mouseUp message was (and still is, in the engine now renamed "LiveCode") sent with an argument that represents the button being pushed, which can be the integers 1, 2, or 3.

Everything old is new again.

We stand on the shoulders of giants in most aspects of life, maybe more so in computing.

Innovation happens, but rarely. Most of what we need to do has been done before. We needn't invent novel UIs for most common tasks, like coming up with a way to let the user make multiple selections in a briefly modal context.

Relying on established convention not only carries all the benefits Jacque listed, it also allows us to devote our mental energy to much harder problems, like finding the optimal product-market fit.

[Davidv]

My bad, sorry I misinterpreted your reply. I'll certainly again apologize for that interpretation of your statements

Thank you.

Referring to earlier posts, I need a bigger range of smilies, current ones are too subtle.

Although I would still like to know from cmhjon what is their perceived need that drives them in their requested direction? There has been no word since the opening post.

[FourthWorld]

There has been no word since the opening post.

Just another day in the LiveCode forums, where the most common pattern is:
1. Someone makes a post.
2. It inspires several pages of sprawling subthreads sometimes loosely related to the opening post.
3. Half the time the author of the opening post returns.
4. Once in a while they note if they were able to find anything among the sprawling subthreads that was useful.



This is a great place for open-ended conversation. For finding answers to questions, folks go to StackOverflow.

[stam]

Oh I don't know, > 70% of the time googling for an answer brings me to this forum; and i've not asked a single question that hasn't been answered in several different ways both entertaining and educating. Certainly a great place to find answers

[dunbarx]

I always treat a query in the forum as a structure and coding challenge, paying no attention at all to such things as HIG. What Jacque and Richard are saying is that for professionals, this is schoolboy thinking.

I agree.

I am interested is solving LC problems, not creating salable software, which I have done only twice, each a special one-off project.

For finding answers to questions, folks go to StackOverflow.

I dunno, Richard, I check that site daily. It seems very grown-up. But there is very little LC activity there, nothing like the use-list and this forum. I wish there were a dozen places I could play around in, but I think there are only these two. And I don't really like the use-list much, anyway.

Craig

[richmond62]

not creating salable software, which I have done only twice

Amazingly enough I have made, over a 20 year period, $100 more than I have ever ploughed back into LiveCode, in terms of direct payment.

However, a large component in my EFL school (the LiveCode standalones for content delivery and reinforcement) wouldn't be
there at all (when I think about having to make those in C++ or Python I reach for my bottle of "reality control" pills). As I have put one son
through private school in Germany, and both my sons through University (1 private Uni' in Philadelphia, 1 state Uni' ib Germany) on the basis
of "The red square is on top of the blue triangle" 'nonsense' knocked together with LiveCode, my profit has been enormous.

Oh, and re tangential discussions . . .

. . . I have sat in committee meetings that have been 100% on topic, and the end result is that I have wanted to go out
and slaughter lots of people, get drunk, or read Wittgenstein (and, frankly the first and the third equate in my mind).

Tangentialism seems to result in far more useful and usable revelations than listening to prophets!

[stam]

I have sat in committee meetings that have been 100% on topic, and the end result is that I have wanted to go out
and slaughter lots of people, get drunk, or read Wittgenstein (and, frankly the first and the third equate in my mind).

+1

[FourthWorld]

I always treat a query in the forum as a structure and coding challenge, paying no attention at all to such things as HIG. What Jacque and Richard are saying is that for professionals, this is schoolboy thinking.

To be clear, I said nothing of the sort. I try to avoid ageism in general, and in that post avoided judgment of any kind.

I merely agreed with Jacque's list of business implications. Of course, of one's not running a business than business considerations don't apply.

FWIW, my interest in periodically reviewing the latest HIGs have little to do with the HIGs themselves. Even if it were limited to that, and the portions of the HIGs that are just arbitrary fashion, like clothing how we dress our apps makes a difference in how they're perceived. And like clothing, these differences are more useful to be aware of in a business context than,say, attending a cocktail party in a friend's backyard.

My main interest in reading HIGs has less to do with the specs themselves than the research behind them. Large chunks of HIGs aren't about mere fashion at all, instead reflecting decades of usability and cognitive psychology research. It's not as easy to appreciate the relationship between core research and the actionable summarization of that research in HIGs, with today's software giants tending toward secretiveness about their usability research methods. But in the olden days of Apple's "Ask Tog" column in their developer newsletter that relationship was made explicitly clear. And when we read current books and articles from Tog, along with Jacob Nielsen, Jared Spool, and others of their caliber, the value of the guidance expressed in HIGs becomes that much clearer.

In the case presented here, seeking a method to support multiple-choice user input, we don't even need any HIG at all, nor did I suggest one.

Instead, I encouraged an examination of the goal to derive a solution to satisfying it.

That the solution arrived at there happens to be conventional has less to do with HIGs than the nature of the task. Multiple choice input is not an exotic need, and likely doesn't require an exotic solution.

[FourthWorld]

For finding answers to questions, folks go to StackOverflow.

I dunno, Richard, I check that site daily. It seems very grown-up. But there is very little LC activity there, nothing like the use-list and this forum.

Popularity is only an indicator of popularity, which can be arrived at by many influences. These forums are the leading support resource because this is where LC Ltd directs people for support. Those who find StackOverflow usually do so on their own in the course of looking for a specific type of Q&A experience.

I make no claim about which is "best"; that's a function of a given goal of a given user in a given moment.

But examining the design differences between forums and StackOverflow is, if nothing else, a mind-expanding exercise in innovation applied to a particular goal:


Since the earliest days of online communities, from dial-up BBSes through FirstClass through AOL through UseNet and now with web forums, conversations are most often sorted in date order.

If the goal is to read the conversation, that's a good way to do things, which no doubt is why it has endured all these decades. Yet it's worth noting that the practice of establishing and maintaining FAQs also evolved along with those venues, in a natural response to conversational display formats in which key information is easily lost in noise.

With the establishment of modern web tooling frameworks, novel solutions have become very practical to explore, and StackOverflow is one of those explorations.

In StackOverflow, conversations are of course added to over time, but not presented in chronological order. Instead, they are ranked by perceived quality of the response to the question.

This qualitative assessment is done through uniquely affordable means: crowdsourcing, the collective wisdom of community members expressed through voting.

So as with any other support venue, a person posts a question, and people write whatever answer they feel is useful. But with community members voting on answer fitness, the answer perceived as the best fit for the problem floats to the top, immediately below the question.

And the other answers are still there, just below the "best" answer, each ranked by its accumulated voting. It's a similar scope of discussion, just ordered by relevance in answering the question rather than the happenstance of time when the answer was submitted.

And given the tailoring of the accompanying search engine, which floats the most popular relevant topics to the top of the SERPs, the StackOverflow architecture is in effect a self-generating and self-maintaining FAQ.

Whether it's more desirable depends on the goals of the questioner. If your goal is to gain a broad understanding of whatever it is you're learning, web forums remain popular. But when you want a quick answer to a specific question so you can get back to the rest of your work expediently, StackOverflow is hard to beat.

Our community offering both is rather common. For example, the Ubuntu community has both its popular web forums and ALSO has AskUbuntu, which is built from StackOverflow's open source package.

Vive la différence!

Richmond reinforces this "let a thousand flowers bloom" perspective here:

. . . I have sat in committee meetings that have been 100% on topic, and the end result is that I have wanted to go out
and slaughter lots of people, get drunk, or read Wittgenstein (and, frankly the first and the third equate in my mind).

Tangentialism seems to result in far more useful and usable revelations than listening to prophets!

When broad-based discussion is most valuable, venue formats encouraging broad-based discussion are the best choice.

Yet I would imagine that same institution also supports one-on-one meetings, when a specific answer to a specific question is needed.

Excepting, of course, the "prophets" part. I don't understand the addition of that element in this discussion, esp. given StackOverflow's democratic-by-design architecture, and so assume it's a reference to a dynamic among the faculty at his institution.

[dunbarx]

Richard.

I meant, and said, nothing about "ageIsm". I was trying to explain that I consider myself merely an experienced hobbyist, who loves to build things, either in physical materials or in software, or both. I spend several hours each day coding in LC, I am a team of one.

As for StackOverflow, I go there each day just to see if there is anything of interest, and, unless I am not using the site properly, I only see one, maybe two LC related posts a week. That is all I meant to say about that site. I would love to hear that I am missing a whole lot of stuff there, and learn how to access it.

Craig

[jacque]

I always treat a query in the forum as a structure and coding challenge, paying no attention at all to such things as HIG. What Jacque and Richard are saying is that for professionals, this is schoolboy thinking.

I wasn't exactly saying that, I was mostly just stuck in my own outlook and didn't think about how others might approach the problem. But you're right. What you create for yourself can be anything that works for you, and I do the same. You should see some of the tools I put together for my own use. I wouldn't dream of sharing them with anyone. They are useful but they don't even meet my own standards.

[FourthWorld]

Richard.

I meant, and said, nothing about "ageIsm".

True, and between "schoolboy thinking" and "very grown-up" I was grasping for a word and focused too easily on the age references in those metaphors, when they are indeed merely metaphors and more general in nature.

Both Jacque and I were uncomfortable with our responses characterized in terms that can sound like judgementalism. I know you well enough to know that's not your intention. I was just clarifying for readers that there are practical benefits to using common conventions for common tasks, and have no opinion about what anyone may explore outside of that.

As for StackOverflow, I go there each day just to see if there is anything of interest, and, unless I am not using the site properly, I only see one, maybe two LC related posts a week.

StackOverflow can be a good place for quick Q and A, but probably not as interesting for general reading.

Enjoy what you find enjoyable.

I spend more time here myself.

[dunbarx]

Both Jacque's and your responses were perfectly mild and correct, in the sense that you were pointing out that it is possible to overdo things when finagling a tool as powerful as LC. It permits one to stray far from HIG, and likely also good taste in general.

I have known both of you since the beginning of time. Never worry about how I feel. I just like to build things with LC.

Craig

[cmhjon]

Hi everyone,

Thank you all so much for the all the replies

Since LC/Apple currently offers no way to do a multi-selection dropdown style menu, I have decided to go with creating a sub stack interface with checkboxes. This option ultimately will make life easier for both me and my end users.

Best regards,
Jon