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What UI first distinguished radio buttons from checkboxes with circles/squares?
- block_dagger 1y agoWhat UI uses circles with checkmarks in them as “OK” buttons? iOS 26. Facepalm.
- johnisgood 1y agoCan I see a screenshot of that? Sounds weird.
- vbezhenar 1y agohttps://i.redd.it/yg2yk2071x7f1.jpeg https://i.redd.it/yg2yk2071x7f1.jpeg
- johnisgood 1y agoIs it not just a circle shaped button?
- LoganDark 1y agoThey said it was a circle with a checkmark in it as an "OK" button, which is exactly what it is; they never said it was a radio button. Here is a screenshot of what actual checkboxes and radio buttons look like on iOS 26 Beta 2: https://imgur.com/a/TwMRW4X https://imgur.com/a/TwMRW4X
- hnlmorg 1y agoIsn’t that just the same as the close buttons that have existed in desktop operating systems for decades? Eg https://www.computerhope.com/issues/pictures/close-window.jpg https://www.computerhope.com/issues/pictures/close-window.jp... I think people have long since learned that if an X is on the corner of a window, that is a button which closes that window.
- wqweto 1y agoAnd Delphi
- aidos 1y agoMore crucially, when did we lose the ability to click and hold on the first checkbox and then drag down the list to set them all the same way! > 1982: Dragging through a field of check-boxes flips the state of the first and assigns the new state to all other boxes dragged through.
- exiguus 1y agoWhat comes close are multi-select patterns. Often drop-downs where you can use the ALT-Key or dragging to select one or more items. Basically the same as in your beloved file-explorer and the list view. To archive a select all, usually there is a "select all" checkbox.
- earthnail 1y agoOn iOS you can swipe with two fingers to select multiple rows. One of the more hidden features. Mentioning it to show that we didn’t lose it everywhere.
- yokljo 1y agoBlender does this. It's sick.
- jfengel 1y agoI don't know when I would use that. If that's something a user would do often I probably want some other design component. In part it's because I don't like check boxes. They don't have great feedback about what's going to happen. If I designed a UI where someone is likely to check a lot of boxes, I would feel I had done something very wrong. Sometimes it's unavoidable and so the framework might as well allow it. And as a user, designers often do things I wouldn't have. But I can say I don't miss having that feature.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mewpmewp2 1y agoMaybe when you have e.g. a list of items/pictures/datasets you want to select to perform some action with, e.g. download, export, or perform some bulk job on?
- teddyh 1y agoISTR a discussion in Tog on Interface on the design choices available, with visual examples. This seems to indicate that the choice was made there.
- RodgerTheGreat 1y agoYou're thinking of a discussion about a hypothetical variant of the radio button, a "one or more" UI element. Discussion here on Lobste.rs: https://lobste.rs/s/v6mkz6/implementing_one_more_ui_component https://lobste.rs/s/v6mkz6/implementing_one_more_ui_componen...
- exiguus 1y agoWhen I see UI radio buttons, I often think about old radios, dishwashers, or washing machines, where you had two or three buttons aligned, and when you press one, the other(s) pop up (if they are already down).
- Waterluvian 1y agoThat’s precisely the metaphor. A radio as in the radio station presets in your car.
- adolph 1y agoiirc, radio buttons were an early form of bookmark in that one would rotate the tuner whose position was annotated by a scale marker, and when the radio was tuned as desired, one would pull the radio button, then push it in to set that button to that tuning. I have a memory of the tactile sensation in my fingers.
- nkrisc 1y agoThat is why they are called "radio buttons".
- smallstepforman 1y agoI actually had a radio with circular radio buttons, which would pop back when you selected another option. It had switches instead of check boxes. The one that drives me crazy is slider based checkboxes. I never know which side is on/off. Bad UI convention. And speaking of checkboxes, I want an actual tick mark (checkmark), not a X cross. Its called checkbox, not Xbox or crossbox, it has to be a checkmark. Also, its a square, not a box. Disaster.
- Tmpod 1y agoYou mean those toggles that are very common on settings pages (i.e. in Android/iOS)? If they are colored, they are very easy to parse, imo, but it never hurts to actually write "on"/"off". Those toggles actually mimic real hardware that used to be fairly common. I find those should be preferred over checkboxes for anything that takes immediate effect. If they don't, and you're collecting a bunch of options at once, in a form, then use checkboxes.
- 1oooqooq 1y agodamn. stack overflow is gone for me. constantly logging me out (6 digits imaginary points) and showing me cloudflare annoyance almost every request. i guess i will just ask AIs trained on their content in the end.
- Tmpod 1y agoYeah, it has been prompting me with CF CAPTCHAS almost every time lately. Didn't use to do that, a few months ago.
- hedora 1y agoOuch. Can confirm. Some paid services I’ve used for years have started aggressively automatically logging me out while I’m driving (eg when using the CarPlay app, which doesn’t include a login screen). I really wonder what the PM’s are thinking.
- rrr_oh_man 1y ago> I really wonder what the PM’s are thinking. Increase number of app downloads
- hedora 1y agoCome to think of it, step 2 of the debugging flow for being hellbanned is “delete and reinstall the app”. So, I guess they win?
- Nextgrid 1y agoThose captchas take more time than going to my usual LLM and asking there. Ironically their anti-AI crusade ends up making me use AI more.
- pavlov 1y agoMy hunch is that the square vs. circle convention is derived from paper forms. The checkbox has been a common design element in forms for a long time. But people can of course tick off all boxes. So when form designers needed to emphasize that you should only select one option, they often used a group of non-boxed options together with instruction copy that read “Circle one” (or similar). The name “radio button” of course comes from physical buttons, but those were often square. So I think the specific circular shape is actually derived from circling an option on paper.
- true_religion 1y agoI had once thought the circle shape came from scantron style examination papers, where you can only fill one circle at a time. It’s similar even if the origins are probably different.
- mystified5016 1y agoRadio buttons were also often round. The age of radio (and phenolics) was full of over-inflated round shapes. But also, when you have a dozen monochromatic pixels to work with, 'square' and 'round' are pretty much the only usefully distinct shapes. Checkboxes were square for obvious reasons, so to distinguish a similar set of controls, you pretty much have to use a circle. I'm pretty sure these concepts moved directly from physical systems to digital ones. Every person alive then knew what an empty square next to a line of text meant, and everyone understood the concept of ganged push-buttons. Just map it onto a pixel grid and you're good to go
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- qingcharles 1y agoiOS has a history of using round checkboxes to muddy the waters: https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/116712/apples-round-checkboxes-where-and-when-are-they-used https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/116712/apples-round-c... (they're not the only offenders in this monstrosity)
- vinceguidry 1y agoI would think actual radios.