[Sigia-l] Year Field: Combo vs. Input Box

[Christopher Fahey [askrom]]

I'm curious about everyone's thoughts about the relative merits of using a
combo box versus a regular text input box for the input of a year (i.e.,
"1983").

For the regular text box, we are able to use client-side JavaScript to do
real-time validation to prevent the typing of non-numeric characters as well
as to prevent the typing of more than four digits. We are also able to use
server-side logic to clean-up valid years improperly formatted -- for
example users may type "83" instead of "1983", and we can catch that and
correct it. We can also, of course, catch fully invalid entries like "193"
or "1893" both on the client side and on the server side, and then require
the user to re-enter. We will also put example text next to the field ("Ex:
1983"), of course.

The combo-box method seems preferable just from a validation point of view
(it's simple), but from a usability point of view there are some serious
issues: primarily because it's a hugely long list. The best we can do to
ameliorate the list length is default it to the median birth year for the
target audience (which is 1967) so that users don't have to scroll too far,
if at all, to reach their own selection.

(There is a miniumum age for this site (1986), so we can actually probably
do a two-digit text input field like this for the "birth year" field: 19___
... That's a third possibility, but I am curious about what we'd do for
non-birth year fields, where 20th and 21st century years are both valid --
we have those too!)

Combo boxes and input fields both have merits and weaknesses, but I'm
curious if we've missed anything to help us decide. Thanks for your
thoughts!

-Cf

[christopher eli fahey]
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