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Comment by exiguus | Hacker News Reader

When I see UI radio buttons, I often think about old radios, dishwashers, or washing machines, where you had two or three buttons aligned, and when you press one, the other(s) pop up (if they are already down).

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I actually had a radio with circular radio buttons, which would pop back when you selected another option. It had switches instead of check boxes.

The one that drives me crazy is slider based checkboxes. I never know which side is on/off. Bad UI convention.

And speaking of checkboxes, I want an actual tick mark (checkmark), not a X cross. Its called checkbox, not Xbox or crossbox, it has to be a checkmark. Also, its a square, not a box. Disaster.

You mean those toggles that are very common on settings pages (i.e. in Android/iOS)? If they are colored, they are very easy to parse, imo, but it never hurts to actually write "on"/"off".

Those toggles actually mimic real hardware that used to be fairly common. I find those should be preferred over checkboxes for anything that takes immediate effect. If they don't, and you're collecting a bunch of options at once, in a form, then use checkboxes.

Unlabeled slider switches were never particularly common.

For instance, my old stereo has push button toggles, where “in” means “on” (this convention was common because of how those switches work), and three way levers with labels on two of the three positions (there’s no space to label the middle position, and it means “default”.

I remember them on mp3-Player, Walkmans, Microphones and even Mobile-Phones. Usually on device that you want to lock or particularly turn on and off. And sometimes you have to push them hard with the help of your Fingernail.

Often enough they are on some websites settings, with (almost) no color, but labelled with imperatives. Option X: "activate". Do I press to activate, or is it already on?

> If they are colored, they are very easy to parse

Relying on color to make something easy to parse is an awesome accessibility choice.

They can be colored and adapt to accessability settings, including color corrections for different types of colorblindness or other impairments. All the toggle designs I've seen in the wild also have the space to write "on"/"off", a check/cross, etc.

I thought about more then two options. For example when you have 10 TV or Radio Channels. They are numbered from 1 to 10. And only one channel can be chosen. Or for example, you can buy concert tickets, maximum is 4 per purchase. You may want radio buttons with a number from 1 to 4. Or you have to choose a color or size for a t-shirt (Mostly they look like buttons but there functionality is radio).

Some toggles are labeled terribly as well, so it’s not clear what “on” even means. Or double negatives so it demands that extra mental cycle just for the sake of having all the sliders to the same side in the default configuration.

Oh yeah, those are just objectively awful X)

>If they are colored, they are very easy to parse

unless the colors are red and green, and the user happens to be red-green colorblind. So yes, always have text indicate on/off as well.

That is why they are called "radio buttons".

That’s precisely the metaphor. A radio as in the radio station presets in your car.

iirc, radio buttons were an early form of bookmark in that one would rotate the tuner whose position was annotated by a scale marker, and when the radio was tuned as desired, one would pull the radio button, then push it in to set that button to that tuning. I have a memory of the tactile sensation in my fingers.

These are properly called "ganged switches" in the physical world.

And yes, radio buttons got their name from the push-button ganged switches that were ubiquitous on pre-digital radios.

Push button light switches that had two circular buttons with this behavior also used to be extremely common.

Our first TV was like this too - before remote controls.

My stand fan for aiding in my skin convection cooling by forcing convection has 4 buttons, 3 latching power levels and 1 non-latching off button.

And those buttons needed to be round, because you could turn them to tune the radio or TV to a station. Pressing the button would then "snap" the tuner back to the preset position of the pressed button.

No they didn't. My first car had a Blaupunkt radio with buttons that worked like that, but they were rectangular.

I think turning the tuning knob typically popped out the preset button, and holding the button down while turning the tuning knob changed the preset. I think this could be done with a loop of string (to control where the dial arrow was) and few springs and catches (to pull the string into position when the button was pressed).

I can’t imagine how the mechanism would work if each preset knob was a tuning knob.

Just have the knob rotation rotate a tuning element, and have the knob pressing switch the tuning element into the receiver circuit.

There was only one knob. To set a preset, you first pull the button out towards you, which released sort of a clamp internal to the mechanism, then push the button back in, and it would clamp on the string at the new position.

I'm gonna have to shoot a video next time I'm at my parents' place, aren't I? (The old Blaupunkt still serves as a stereo in the garage.)

Ok, apparently there were different ways this was implemented. I remember a friends old TV as a child, where it worked exactly as I have described.

This is similar to what I mean, although it's a radio, not a TV and the buttons I remember where taller and had ridges on the side so they could be turned easily.

https://herculodge.typepad.com/herculodge/2011/06/as-i-walke...

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