Little secret of big drop-down lists or the wisdom of Russian scientific editors

I read now the book Soft - sucks! And what to do with it? (at the request of the public I warn you that the link is affiliate).



The author writes about the horror of the long drop-down list as a navigation tool.

To go to UPS.com's Swedish page, you need to open the country selection window by clicking on it, then enter S to go to the letter in the list, then press the down arrow 26 times to get to Sweden (there are many countries starting with S), finally click on the list to close it, and then click the forward arrow to go to the right place. Only then will you see the UPS web page for Sweden.

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And in two notes, he chuckles at people offering various ways of adapting to the misery of the interface.

1 One big geek noticed that a reasonable Swede could hit T and get directly to Tadjikistan, and from there, three presses of the up arrow would move to Sweden. The proposal to get to Sweden through Tajikistan is the complete opposite of the design under the motto “don't make the user think”



2 Another reasonable Swede could try immediately after S to press W to go to SWeden, as it helps in sensible programs like Outlook. Unfortunately, the list of countries on UPS.com is stupid and cannot do such a thing. When you enter W, he interprets it not as the second letter of the word, but as a new first and takes you to a country called Wallis and Futuna (French territory in the South Pacific between Fiji and Samoa - further away from Sweden than Tajikistan).

And then comes a masterpiece note editor.

3 Still, if you press the keys (in this case, S, w, e) quickly enough, you can select the country immediately. In addition, the list of countries is scrolled with the mouse, i.e. 26 clicks is too much even for phlegmatic. -

Note ed.

Well, in general, it is typical for Russian editors of translated literature - to try to show their superiority over the author in the notes, instead of correcting inaccuracies, smoothing the difficulties of translation, etc.



But here the editor exposes himself to be a complete idiot, quite seriously suggesting a third way of adapting to a wretched interface in a book calling for an end to put up with wretched interfaces.



You cannot refuse him with one thing - he really showed his superiority over the author and over the reader. I did not know that drop-down lists have such a bonus feature for super-speed keys. I am sure the author of the book did not know either. And I am sure I would have laughed too.



Update

It seems that it is necessary to clarify that before this text indicated on the definition of geographic location and language on the main page of Google. That is, about how you can and should do.



And to quote a through thought of the book: “Programmer, understand, the user is not like you!”. (This is for those guys who believe that everyone should know about the ability to select an item using the keys and type quickly enough.)



Update 2

And, probably, many commentators will be surprised, but many users in general are not aware that you can go to the list item with the help of keys. And not everyone has a wheel for fast and easy scrolling.