[Sigia-l] RE: Large lists

[Matthew C. Clarke]

Karin_Kellerman at Vanguard.com writes:

> The IRS receives constant praise for its Forms & Publications
> download section
> (link below).  Do you know of any alternate means to presenting a large
> selection list to users?
>
> http://www.irs.gov/forms_pubs/forms.html


The IRS selection process assumes that you can tell what docs you require
from their title alone. If that is the case, it works OK. But otherwise, the
metaphor of a shopping cart is a better alternative. After all, what does
Amazon do apart from allow you to select from a large list (i.e. all their
products)?

I can see a couple of other problems with the IRS system:

* The instructions say I must first select a file format, but I can't see
any way to do that.

* I have never liked the use of Shift- and Control-clicking for long lists.
It's fine if the list is all visible, but for a long list I inevitably get
just about everything I want selected and then accidentally click without
the modifier key depressed and lose all my previous selections. I can think
of two better interfaces: put a check box next to each item; or have two
lists side by side -- the full list, and an empty list that is populated as
the user selects from the full list.

The World Clock website used to use the IRS-style list to allow you to
select the geographic locations whose time you wanted to see. I just looked
there today and they have now changed to the two list idea I mentioned
above. See for yourself at
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/setpersonal.cgi.

Matt.