Better Pickers
October 4, 2005
A few years ago, I wrote Thorston Lemke with a feature request for his excellent Graphic Converter. I asked him to add some code that would set the file’s format from the filename I typed. Every time I saved a JPG, I needed to fish through this huge list to find it:
He added the feature in a day or two, and it’s been the default since. I know most applications don’t export 75 formats, but even 5 make the drop-down a chore compared to just typing the format in.
The format drop-down has lots of cousins on the Web. There’s the credit card expiry date pickers, the state/province pickers, the country pickers, time zone pickers—the list goes on. Look at this:
To be fair, this mess is only revealed if you want to choose a specific date and time instead of the default “later today” (or one of the nine other presets in another drop-down). 
And that’s from Backpack, carefully built by the brilliant team at 37signals. Now go look at Simon Willison’s date picker—it’s a weekend hack, but is so much better than mousing through dozens of options spread through six drop-downs.
For some facts, hop over to Wikipedia’s entry on Fitts’ Law. I’d appreciate your comments or other examples, please send them to beau@hartshorne.ca.