931728 - Change measurements select drop down to datalist

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Data Platform and Tools :: General, defect)

Description

[Schalk Neethling [:espressive]]

The measurements select drop down currently carries well over 600, if not 700, options. This makes the select element unwieldy, does not make for a good user experience and sometimes, simply breaks.

I would suggest that we replace this specific select with a datalist (http://www.w3.org/TR/html-markup/datalist.html). With this element, combined with a standard text input, the 'options' are still generated but, are hidden from view and allows the user to quickly find what they are looking for in an autocomplete style fashion.

Comment 1

[Jonas Finnemann Jensen (:jonasfj)]

I agree, there should be some way of searching the selectors, but maybe allowing for exploration is nice too?
I considered something like http://silviomoreto.github.io/bootstrap-select/,
the live search feature combined with optgroups looked pretty nice.

But bootstrap-select might not be the best choice, it looks complicated to interface from the Javascript,
in any event I'm sure there lots of other options out there.
I have no preference, just pick something that fits the design :)

Comment 2

[Jonas Finnemann Jensen (:jonasfj)]

You're welcome to redo selectors :)
There is a simple strategy you can implement, so no need to do all filtering again, but as deployed yesterday, I see limited reason to use data-lists. Reopen, if you'd like to work more on selectors, though select2 might be a better option... See bug 912267 for details.