A Rant About Dropdown Scroll Into View
"Scroll Into View" is when the computer automatically scrolls down on a box with a scroll bar to make the section of interest visible on screen and easy to click.
On some forms, there are dropdowns with hundreds of options, and the most inconvenient scrollbars I have ever seen. At least the options are usually alphebatised.
Example of a nightmare dropdown (image)
Fortunetly, there is a shortcut! If you start pressing letters on the keyboard, the options starting with the corresponding letters will scroll into view.
Technicallity: Because dropdowns elements are usually provided by the Operating System, the shortcut I am describing might be specific to my OS which is MacOS.
Example to play with:
...Except they will scroll into view only the first alphabetic option to the bottom of the dropdown list. This means that most options starting with the target letter are not actually visible. Which means you still have to use the scrollbar, and scroll downwards to the option you want.
...And in a lot of applications the keyboard shortcut works on the first letter only1. So if you try to keep typing the second letter of your option, instead of zeroing in, it will just take you on an adventure around the alphebatized options list by interpreting every next letter you press as the "first" letter.
A way around this is to press the letter which is after your letter in the alphabet. For example, if your option starts with "S", press "T" and you will have a bunch of "S-" entries at the top and only a single "T-" entry at the bottom. But this is insanity. I shouldn't need to know the alphabet to apply for the Unicode Consortium!
Whoever is in charge of UX2, please scroll alphabetized options into view at the top of the dropdown list.
Thank you.
- very qualified dropdown expert
MacOS actually has this solved and lets you keep typing the option name. But applications which choose to use their own, non-operating system provided, dropdowns often have this "every keypress new first letter" issue. Admittedly, tracking sequences of keys is really convoluted, so the lack of this feature can be forgiven.↩
I will probably fix it myself once the dropdowns drive me insane enough.↩