[thelist] radio/checkbox usability

[Joe Crawford]

aardvark wrote:
> stumbled across this today:
> http://www.headhunter.lycos.com/JobPoster/Resumes/resfind.asp?t=1

> overall the page is pretty ugly and it doesn't do much for me... but
> one thing caught my eye that seemed really cool and potentially
> useful... scroll down to the checkboxes or radio buttons while using
> IE5/wintel or Opera 5 (N6 is acting up, so i can't test it there)...
> 
> notice the hover?

This was talked about last week on webdesign-l (or was it here? I can
never keep my too-busy list subs straight) - I'm surprised to see this
in use already. My first seeing of it was this article (again, which I
think I saw last week):

http://gethelp.devx.com/techtips/dhtml_pro/10min/10min0101/10min0101.asp

> i'm trying to guage the usability impact of this (without
> implementing it and bringing in a focus group)... and here's where i
> am...
> 
> - it only works on browsers that support <label> and CSS, so it
> won't confuse users that surf in NN3 (por ejemplo), and it will
> degrade well if you don't have CSS enabled somehow...
> 
> - it doesn't work precisely like most radio buttons or checkboxes in
> my OS, since most of them don't have a color change on hover...
> 
> - the cursor stays an arrow and does not become a hand, so it
> doesn't signal that it's a link in the standard sense...
> 
> - the rollover color is different than the link color on the page... i
> wonder if having them the same would be problematic...
> 
> overall i think it can be very useful... any ideas?
> 
> btw, the (corrected) code is:
> 
> <input type="radio" name="DT" value="DT32*" id="DT2"><label
> for="DT2" onmouseover="this.style.color='blue'"
> onmouseout="this.style.color='black'">Up to 25%</label>

Thanks for posting a use of this kind of thing "in the wild" very cool.

	Joe
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Joe Crawford ||||||||||||||       mailto:jcrawford at avencom.com
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