1883369 - <select multiple=""> is generally unintuitive to users

Status: NEW

(Core :: Layout: Form Controls, enhancement)

Description

[psychpsyo]

Steps to reproduce:

I created a <select> element with the multiple option specified.

Actual results:

I received requests from multiple of my users, sometimes groups of users, for me to add the option to clear their selection in the element, believing that this was impossible.

Every single time I am able to resolve this by explaining to them how to interact with a multi-select box.
Specifically, I tell them that they can use Ctrl+click to deselect options which solves all their problems.

Expected results:

A multiple select element should make it more obvious to the user that options can be de-selected and how to do so.

My main suggestion would be that clicking an already selected option should deselect it, rather than deselecting everything else.
(especially if only that one option is selected as in that situation, clicking it currently does nothing at all which is probably never what the user intended.)

Though I do think something like checkboxes or little tick marks on selected options would make it abundantly clear that both selecting and deselecting are possible things to do.

I am aware that my second solution has been proposed in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=566015 already, but I am opening this one since I feel that just asking specifically for check boxes fails to properly illustrate my issue, seems like an instance of the XY-problem, and leaves no room for discussion or alternative solutions to address the issue.

Comment 1

[Monica Chiorean]

Marking as new since this is an enhancement. If component is not correct please update. Thank you.

Comment 2

[psychpsyo]

This has been addressed in Chromium by making it so that, when clicking an option in a multi-select, if it is the only selected option, it will be deselected instead of nothing happening:
https://chromiumdash.appspot.com/commit/9e3553c8bde309141b84a1c7386c242483f57532