[IxDA Discuss] 'Select Country' dropdown

[Jennifer Berk]

On Dec 17, 2007 12:15 PM, Bryan Minihan <bjminihan at nc.rr.com> wrote:
> I can't tell you how many times I've had to build a country drop-down, and
> I've come to prefer "most likely selection first, with alphabetical
> following".  For a truly global company/site where people are likely to be
> from everywhere (and/or you don't want to show bias toward a particular
> country), I'd probably go with pure alphabetical.

An interesting discussion of this issue is at
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200608/selecting_country_names_in_forms/
.  Discussed in the comments is another strategy for country
dropdowns: if you're willing to put in some programming time and
possibly buy a dataset, you can use the "most likely" method based not
on the aggregate audience but on an individual IP address / country
lookup.  If my browser says I'm in the US, I see that at the top of
the list; if it says I'm in Japan, I see that instead.

Or (again from the 456bereastreet conversation) let the user type
their country into a field, with type-ahead and error checking as
desired: http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/index.php/2006/forms-inputting-country-names/
.

Jennifer Berk