Development:Dropdown Lists

Moodle User Interface Guidelines > Dropdown Lists

Note: This article is a work in progress. Please use the page comments or an appropriate moodle.org forum for any recommendations/suggestions for improvement.

Status: incomplete This is a guideline for a Moodle Interface Guideline. Comments: developer forum thread

Forces: factors that affect selection

• There may be too little room for several radio buttons or even for a checkbox

Common mistakes

Dropdown lists are used in Moodle (1.9) too much, and should be replaced with a checkbox when the choice is just yes/no, or otherwise usually with radio buttons.

A dropdown menu is not a navigation menu, but a form element. Hiding the submit button and making the form element submit automatically when a value is selected may raise serious accessibility issues. Where one is needed, a navigation menu (usually a CSS styled unordered list in HTML) should be used.

See also: Joel Spolsky's take on this

Related guidelines

Checkboxes and Radio buttons should be used instead in most cases.

Related issues in the tracker

TODO: go through the misuses of dropdown lists and create tickets

Further information / Sources

GNOME HIG: Drop-down Lists