Styling a <select>?

[Martinez, Jesse]

I'm in a "ditto, Colin" mood today. We should stick with the default
conventions for selects. (Not just for ease of making our lives easier,
but for the simplicity of the interface too!)

Of course, if we go the stylized ordered lists route then it'll be a
cinch to add in a checkmark to the selected list item. I'll look into
this prospect and see if it is worth the time commitment and testing. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Colin Clark [mailto:colinbdclark at gmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 11:29 AM
> To: Anastasia Cheetham
> Cc: Martinez, Jesse; Fluid Work; Work list
> Subject: Re: Styling a <select>?
> 
> 
> On 20-Oct-09, at 11:26 AM, Anastasia Cheetham wrote:
> >> I believe Erin's wireframes were just using a quick-n-dirty way to
> >> show
> >> a dropdown, and as stylized as it appears it really wasn't.
> >
> > The only reason I was concerned about the checkmark was the comments
> > at the bottom of the wireframe page. Here's the link again:
> >
> > http://wiki.collectionspace.org/display/collectionspace/Wireframes+-
> +Dropdown
> >
> > In the comments, it says:
> >
> > MF + ATS 3/9/09: Looks good, unsure about the check mark. Is it
> > necessary/useful?
> >
> > EY: It is a common convention in many desktop applications. It shows
> > which option is selected even when the highlight is moved away from
> > the selected option.
> >
> >
> >
> > From this, I assumed that the designer felt the check mark was
> > necessary, or at least very desirable. But I'd be perfectly happy to
> > find out that a plain <select> is more than adequate!! It would make
> > my job much easier :-)
> 
> At least on the Mac, the checkmark is present out of the box when
> using the default controls. On other platforms, we're probably best to
> stick with their own native conventions, which will, again, come out
> of the box.
> 
> Easy!
> 
> Colin
> 
> ---
> Colin Clark
> Technical Lead, Fluid Project
> http://fluidproject.org