Drop down lists for country selection

-

I am sure you've used many times a drop down list to chose from a set of limited choices. One common use is to mark the country when specifying a shipping address.

Some websites default to your own country, which is a good thing for the locals but eventually other people will have to select another value from the list.

As I am currently based in Spain everything I buy from other countries does not default to my country so I am forced to go down the list. There is a shortcut that works on different operating systems which is pressing the first character of the word you are looking for to go to the first, second, third element, and so on of names starting with that same character. Sometimes this can be much faster than using the mouse.

However, I have discovered that the common way of storing this lists does not make my life very easy when searching for my own country. There are several problems:
  1. Not all the site use the same list so you never know what is the location of the item you are looking for.
  2. Although alphabetic sorting is common it is not always the case.
  3. Have you ever seen how many country names start with "S"? (if not have a look at the USPS list). It takes much longer to search that to write and keyboard shortcuts does not help too much, as you can easily run over the one you are looking for.
After thinking about the problem for a while I reckon site designers should consider a "user-friendly" sort order. I would define such a sorting order in a way that on average users have to press the minimum number of times their country name first character to get it right. I know that alphabetic order seems a good choice, but after using it for a while I am not so sure.

Naturally, to achieve such an order, population numbers come into play. In order to minimize the average mentioned above you need to sort the countries alphabetically using only the first character and in a decreasing order of population.

There are 72 different entries starting with character "S" on USPS country list. In case you wonder it is country names starting with "Y" the ones that render the shorter list.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

VFD control with Arduino using RS485 link

-
Image
Variable Frequency Drives ( VFD ) allow the control of spindles so speed can accurately be controlled and a detailed acceleration profile for the spindle and reverse rotation can all be handled. In essence a VFD is an three phase inverter for three-phase AC motor. I am using a popular (I mean cheap) Chinese VFD and though the reference manual is not great, I could see there is a built-in RS-485 port. I usually control the start, stop and speed selection using the keyboard on the unit but I thought it will be more useful if I could control everything from the same Arduino is doing our CNC table control. Some cheap RS-485 off eBay and some lines of code later, I can start, stop and change the speed from an Arduino. What a cool thing to have! Some configuration of your VFD are needed before you can use it like that.  You need to set PD163=1 (I am using address 1 in the code). PD=164=1 (for setting serial to 9600bps) and PD165=0 (for using ASCII and 8N1 character format)
Read more

How to get sinusoidal s-curve for a stepper motor

-
Image
After some experimentation, and delving a bit into the math of motion, I realized there can be a significant difference on the motion of a machine by just making small changes. A common and popular approach to smooth one axis of motion is to use a trapezoidal speed pattern, where acceleration and deceleration are uniformly accelerated movements (aka constant acceleration motion) separated by a portion happening at cruising speed. The problem comes with the fact that, while that approach is simple to understand and to code, it does contain sudden changes in the acceleration, that show as spikes on the acceleration derivative, called jerk. These sudden changes in the acceleration translate into undesired vibration in our machines. Most of that can be eliminated by selecting a motion pattern that does not contain sudden changes of acceleration. If we chose a mathematical function for our speed whose second derivative is continuous, then we reduce system vibration quite a lot. One ma
Read more

Importing OpenSCAD designs into Onshape

-
Image
After using Onshape CAD software for a while I am really fond of it. So one natural thing to do, specially once they have released the Instructor's kit is to start using it in the classroom too. But one thing I was not so sure how to do was to use old designs I made using OpenSCAD. It does not mean I am completely quitting using OpenSCAD but suddenly I can see I can do assemblies in Onshape that will look quite nice for showing and documentation purposes if only I could easily import from OpenSCAD. I am glad to report that the route OpenSCAD --> FreeCAD --> Onshape worked brilliantly. Even more when a few tricks were applied. While some people suggest to import CSG files from OpenSCAD to FreeCAD, I have had more success by directly importing SCAD files into FreeCAD. One trick that worked well for me was to get rid of $fn references, so now circles become real circles (or cylinders) in FreeCAD. If a part keeps some $fn references then your cylinders or circles wi
Read more