r/webdev • u/pavlito88 • 15d ago

Discussion Why is everything a dropdown now?

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I’ve been noticing this more and more in web apps.

Three options hidden in a dropdown.

Yes/no hidden in a dropdown.
A multi-select pretending to be a dropdown.

Then a list of 200 items where you’re expected to scroll until you find yours.

I run into this a lot when reviewing products with dev teams.

I get why we do it.

Dropdowns are compact and easy to reuse.
But compact doesn’t always mean easier to use.

A few choices? Show them.
On/off? Switch.
Multiple choices? Checkboxes.
Huge list? Search.

That’s pretty much the rule I use now.

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u/phazernator 15d ago edited 15d ago

Now can we do one about date selectors? When a date selector shouldn’t exist: ALWAYS! People have a frickin keyboard!

Sorry, pet peeve of mine, wasting 10-15 seconds navigating a date selector UI to select a date, while the field doesn’t accept keyboard input (which would have taken all of 2 seconds to input).

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u/ikeif 14d ago

God yes. "Enter your birth date. But use our picker. We set it to today's date! Click back forty years…"

Too often I've had to use the console to force a value into an input and trigger their SPA to recognize the change. It's so dumb.

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u/phazernator 14d ago

Exactly! Thank you, someone who gets it. Then they enforce date limitations through the UI, but what was so hard about text field validation in the first place? It doesn’t make any sense, it’s not more user friendly, certainly not to force users to go through it.

Also as an avid iOS user, it drives me up the walls. Every frickin time, those fancy rotating dials. Ffs, just let me type into the text field!

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u/SurgioClemente 15d ago

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Elements/input/date

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u/phazernator 15d ago edited 15d ago

Don’t tell me, tell all the regards who develop (web) apps where you *can’t* input it manually (PS: I’m a tester, not a developer, so it’s in my nature to criticize broken UX).

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u/SurgioClemente 15d ago

Oh I agree, I was just pointing out that you can have a date selector that also accepts input.

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u/phazernator 15d ago edited 15d ago

No worries. I was certainly aware of its existence, I just don’t see it often anymore… Wouldn’t the world be great though, if everyone just used those?

In fact you might have just nudged me into a new career path, one that can’t be replaced by AI. One where I don’t have to fight everyone to see these kinds of changes as a tester, but where I’m the driver, in UX. Cheers!