iPhone Web Apps and Long Dropdown
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- SteveJobs
I can't recall ever coming across this myself, but I have a Country > State/Region > City group of dropdowns that users have to select from and the issue is the the length of the city list, which can reach well into the thousands. On the iPhone choosing a city in California, for example, that starts with the 's' takes a looooong time to scroll to get to using that weird price is right scroll wheel the iphone throws up.
Ever seen or come up with an elegant solution for something like this?
weeeeeeee.....
- SteveJobs0
Btw, I was thinking of using a textbox that when typed in would open a div of names that could be selected (kinda like what google does in search), but was curious if there were other ideas out there.
- monospaced0
They deal with long lists (songs & contacts, for example) by allowing the user to jump to the letter of the alphabet by just touching it. Other than that, I'm not sure.
- SteveJobs0
I don't think the default picker for html dropdowns has those letters. At least not on the version of iOS that I'm using.
- mg330
Who would use a City drop down? On just about every form I've ever seen that's a text field, not a drop down.
- SteveJobs0
because i need the city to resolve to an id in the database.
- SteveJobs0
for example, if someone type ft. worth when the city in the database is fort worth or ft worth, or worse if they misspell it, i won't be able to reference the record.
- monNom0
zip code lookup?
auto-complete/suggested cities on textfield?
- monNom0
^ with validation ie: "did you mean "XXXX" "
- mg330
Where do you even get a data set of cities in a state? And are you talking about cities specific to the state selected, or like every city in America?
You could always have them select county, then only display cities that are in a county.
- database - several gigs in size containing world city data.SteveJobs
- mg330
I don't know if you have the means to do this, but a city type-ahead with synonym matching would clear that up. But who would manage the synonyms? I'm working with a couple clients now on understanding type-aheads and synonyms and the management of really making the synonyms work well is an entire project itself.
- SteveJobs0
zip could could work, but does every country support postal codes? I can't limit or exclude anyone here. i'll have to poke through the tables and see if there are any holes.
and yes, auto-complete was my thought as well (see my second post in this thread).
- whatthefunk0
make it a full width page list, may be a better user experience
- and add the contact list side alphabet - http://lh4.ggpht.com…whatthefunk
- SteveJobs0
^ thanks, but this is web-based.
would be cool if mobile safari took custom markup and rendered other controls.
I wound up just creating my own javascript auto complete and then i do a validation check upon submit to ensure the text entered matches a city in the list.