I hate HTML radio buttons

Question

once selected (even if by mistake), HTML radio buttons can not be unselected. You can only choose a different option.

But what if none of the other options make sense either??

It would be great if we could include the option for "none of the above" as an option -- or else, use checkboxes instead of radio buttons.

I've just discovered a workaround to unselect a mistaken selection. The "confirmed with DNA" option had been selected by mistake... I simply disconnected the parent, and reconnected. Now none of the radio buttons are selected again -- just like new.

Comments

Or the "no middle name" radio button that should not be a radio button but a check box...

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Check box is an excellent idea and maybe a lot easier to program ?

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I think it's quite easy to change this. As far as I know the admins only have to change input type="radio" to input type="checkbox" in the html form.

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If I accidentally select one of those 'sticky fields' (HTML buttons) I copy the profile bio that I'm editing;  refresh the web page; delete the old bio field info and replace the now blank space with the earlier copied text. That way the HTML fields are back to the original setting and I don't have to start over again.  :-)  P.S. this process assumes I haven't saved my editing yet.

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@Koen,

We Dutch are lucky. Do not know the concept of middle name, so only have to set "no middle name", never have to unset! And of course never enter a middle name. All given names go in the "proper first name" item.

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Actually, it is a simple coding change to switch from a radio button.  But then you must store the answer in the database and interpret the answer when displaying.  

Since there is only one database field for each set of radio buttons, a programmer might (for example) set the data for Suffix to "certain|uncertain" if you had chosen both. Then when the data is redisplayed the next time you edit the profile, the programmer would need to change the display code to check both boxes.  This is a fairly trivial task.  Of course, it would make the result illogical.

Even more illogical would be a birthdate that is marked "about/uncertain|exact/certain|before this date|after this date|blank for extra privacy".  No, don't tell me this won't happen.  When you give people the opportunity to do silly things, they will.  It is a corollary to Murphy's Law.

So, let's address the problem by recommending an extra radio button that is labeled something like "none" for each of these fields.  When the edit page is re-populated, "none" never shows as selected.

Answer 1

Oh, DENNIS, is THAT what you did?? I love it. Such a SIMPLE fix and so "simple' it is counter intuitive because we are admonished here at WT to CONNECT, not disconnect .... THANK YOU AGAIN

Comments

yeah, but it took me a whole day before I thought of it :)

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How about just exiting the profile without saving?

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Tommy, the point is that it had already been saved... no other way to undo it

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If you edited a lot and then accidentally clicked the wrong radio button, you will lose everything when you exit the profile without saving.

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If you edited a lot and then accidentally clicked the wrong radio button, you will lose everything when you exit the profile without saving.

commented by Leandra Ford

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Copy and paste the lot to a text file, exit, reopen, copy and paste from the text file.  Fix whatever needs fixing, click the appropriate radio button, save and exit.

Answer 2

And you can accidentally move to the wrong button when trying to leave the entry.  At least, I do.

Answer 3

Radio buttons are meant to not be unselected by design.

Can you give an example where the given options don't make sense? I feel like a lot of the issue is that people are hesitant to select "uncertain" when they aren't confident about information, and they think that "blank" signals some state in-between certain and uncertain.

Comments

I'm generally afraid of commitment. Many people seem to be, as well. :)

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If I'm not significantly uncertain, then I pick certain.  It doesn't seem like a big deal.  I don't see it displayed on the profiles.

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Nothing in genealogy is ever certain. Highly probable maybe, but not certain. Absent parent-child of full - sibling DNA evidence, anyway.

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I don't need dna "evidence" to prove my children are mine.  I have 9 months of going through hell (with my son) to prove it. I have the almost 9 months of carrying, the worrying about maybe having caught rubella from the idiot woman who came to a baby shower when she knew she had it, the other things that were diagnosed before my daughter was born.

I have the 24-plus hours of labour for my son.  I have the fear that comes with "your baby is in distress, we have to induce" for my daughter.

There is no dna "evidence" that can better prove to me my kids are mine, than the evidence of my personal knowledge already does.

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The worst thing is when you select the unmarried/no spouse radio button by mistake, If you  realize later that you have have mixed up the brother who died young with the brother who married, you have a problem.

It shows up in the five-generation descendant chart. At the lowest level, if I remember correctly. There's a thread about this from a few yers ago.

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OK, I looked up the old threads about the unmarried/no spouse radio button problem:

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/913013/unmarried-flag-remains-after-marriage-added - from September 2019

and

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/831059/weird-glitch-regarding-marital-status - from May 2019

The example I gave in my response to the question in May 2019 has since been corrected by switching the brothers, so it's no longer an example.

I think I have made this mistake only twice in my 100 000+ contributions - the first time I did it by inadvertently clicking the big black button for No Spouse instead of saving the spouse I had filled in the form for. That was when I was still a newbie.

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The limited choices on radio buttons can create headachez when they have been ticked by some other member without a sound basis for making a choice. I refer, for example, to the situation where a newish member (who I will call Newgie) ticks Confirmed with DNA on every profile that is connected to them as an ancestor, going back to 1500, mistakenly thinking that this designation is appropriate because Newgie took an auDNA test. After another member explains the policy to Newgie, a few dozen affected profiles need to have this indicator reset. Since neither Newgie nor the member who intervened are likely to have any familiarity with more than a few of the profiles, the most honest choice would be to reset them all to blank (meaning Undesignated), but the only available options are Confident and Uncertain.

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Recent example: I was working on a profile where a first name was tentatively Tina but the only source was a text only transcription of an image so I couldn't verify. I couldn't find evidence of this Tina anywhere else under any surname with pretty wide searches, so I marked first name Tina as "uncertain."

It turns out her name is more like Sina / Seine / Seina.

It's spelled differently in each record I've found, and I'd very much like it to be neither certain nor uncertain now. I am certain it was a variant of S*n* while not being certain of "best" spelling, and I'm sure it's no longer uncertain. It's definitely certain-ish which isn't the same as certain. I'd rather just remove the "uncertain" radio button than have to chose between two equally un-nuanced options for such a nuanced woman. And this woman, ya'll! She was incredible; what anecdotes we have tells me she certainly was not an uncertain person ;)