A bit of a random questions but here goes.
I am re-developing a website to be mobile friendly and it has a massive form with lots of <input /> tags. as I Was researching similar sites and there solutions I found that <select><option>... are a bit intrusive and radio buttons worked better for me.
As this will go in a report I don’t think saying “the best input method is radio buttons as I like then” will cut it somehow. does anyone have any good suggestions on what is the “best” way? OR is there a way of getting a vote going?
any help or direction is (as always) appreciated
Update: As I think of it, smart phones convert a drop-down list into a set of radio buttons and shows the user that in a similar popup/dialog box to the keyboard. is this a good excuse? hehe 🙂
This is a UI/UX consideration, plus you have to take into consideration if more select/radio options will be added in the future.
If there are more than 3 or 4 selections I would make those elements selects from a UI/UX standpoint.
Mobile browsers have no problem displaying any sized select, there are some jQuery plugins that you can find that will offer alternative interactions.
If more select/radio options are going to be added down the road (from a database for example) then radio buttons won’t be a good choice. Nothing like trying to select from 15 radio buttons.
In the end I prefer to let the browser take control of the select and display it to its default setting. Trying to style over or replace a select with a third party solution can get a bit sticky when going cross browser.
Hope this helps to answer your question.