UMN Usability - Change explanation for multiple values
KarenS - February 27, 2008 - 22:43
| Project: | Content Construction Kit (CCK) |
| Version: | 6.x-1.x-dev |
| Component: | Usability |
| Category: | task |
| Priority: | normal |
| Assigned: | Unassigned |
| Status: | active |
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Description
People are totally confused about what 'Multiple values' means, especially when used with checkboxes or radios. They think it's the number of options to show instead of the number of fields.
One suggestion is to change it to:
Show [1] field(s) in the form
That would be more clear for most widgets, but still not right for checkboxes or select where multiple really just means make it possible to select more than one option, so we need a different display for those widgets.
#1
No better suggestion for now, but -1 for "Show [1] field(s) in the form"
'Multiple' status goes beyond what the user sees in node forms. This is data level stuff.
We generally want to move away from form-driven stuff, so defining such an important data property basing on form workflow is a bad idea IMO.
#2
I'd suggest leaving 'Multiple' in as a label, and providing further help text in #description'
#3
Well there's also the issue that we show options for 1-10 values when they use checkboxes and those numbers do absolutely nothing -- you can choose different numbers and keep trying to see what effect it has and you'll see no change. The ideal would be not to have all those options on checkboxes and selects where the only options are really 0 or 1. But that is driven by the widget and this is a field value, so not sure we can alter the options based on the widget.
This was a big usability issue, we need to do something here. We can improve the description, but we still have options that make no sense in some situations.
#4
Regarding the terminology, I favor something along the lines of "Repeat this < text field > < dropdown > number of times on the form." Separating the context-dependent functionality is a separate issue. The < text field > would ideally be based upon the user's widget selection.
#5
@libsys : again, I do have strong feeling against defining the 'multiple' status by a reference to node forms.
Forms are not the only way to create nodes (and, if things go as we hope in drupal world, this should becode more and more true)
Whet is defined here is *data*.
@KarenS : "checkboxes / selects don't make any difference between multiple : 'n>2' and multiple : 'unlimited'."
That's currently true, but isn't it just because we didn't implement the proper validation step ? I think it would be perfectly doable.