October 25, 2006 at 6:38 am
One problem I'd like to solve (without using a custom program) is a dropdown list that has many (a hundred or more) items to choose. For instance, suppose you have a report that shows sales by product groups. Oftentimes, users will want to see sales for, say, 5 similar product groups in one report. THe problem is the dropdown list will contain 400 product groups! Scrolling the list is tedious.
Is there a trick to making it easier to work with such large lists. I suppose you could create a multi-column report that shows all the product groups, but how would you choose the ones to include in the report?
If anyone has any examples of this, I would appreciate seeing it. Thanks!
smv929
October 26, 2006 at 7:07 am
If you could group your products in some way that would help. Then you could have two dropdowns, the first would select the product group and the second would display only those products in that group.
October 26, 2006 at 10:07 am
I can think of a few ways to make this easier. I'm not sure what your application platform is, so I don't know how much custom programming is required for each solution.
1- Group the product groups by first letter. You could probably write a SQL query to figure out the distribution (e.g., "S" might be its own group while "W-Z" might be another). Then display the alphabetical break-down as a set of buttons, hyperlinks or another drop-down list. Then show only the groups from the selected alphabetical group.
2- Change the group drop-down into more of a "search" capability. The user enters text in a text box and presses a button to search for the desired groups.
3- Alter the drop-down settings so the user can select groups by typing in the drop-down (closest match appears), then press a key (e.g., tab) to select the desired group.
4- Allow the user to select a list of favorite product groups as a preference. Chances are, if you have 400 product groups, most users only look at a few of them that are relevant to them. Provide the favorites in a drop-down, with an option to use the 400 item drop-down if the user wants something different.
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