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Checkbox states and colors confuse users
Message
From
15/04/2005 09:36:06
Hilmar Zonneveld
Independent Consultant
Cochabamba, Bolivia
 
 
To
15/04/2005 09:27:26
General information
Forum:
Visual FoxPro
Category:
Classes - VCX
Environment versions
Visual FoxPro:
VFP 9
Miscellaneous
Thread ID:
01005083
Message ID:
01005088
Views:
29
>Someone at MS in his (or her) wisdom has decided that checkboxes with null values should be checked but grayed out.
>
>This is of course debatable, but what's worse - if the checkbox for some reason is read only, it gets disabled, with incidentally the same color as the null value.
>
>Here's where the fun begins - now a null value is no longer distinguishable from a checked value.
>
>Any ideas on workarounds?

I do see some difference (VFP 6): when it it ReadOnly, there is no visual clue (in itself confusing); when it is disabled, the text gets gray; when it is only NULL, the text is normal, but the square is gray. While there is a difference, I agree that it is confusing.

One alternative might be to change the Picture dynamically (when the value is NULL), but that seems complicated for something that should really be quite simple. If you want to try it, you may want to change the Picture to a gray square for the third state (NULL or 2). I think that would be less confusing.
Difference in opinions hath cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire... (from Gulliver's Travels)
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