[IxDA Discuss] 'Select Country' dropdown

[Jeff Seager]

I wonder about #2, Billy ... Most likely according to whose criteria? Ordered by population? Saturation of internet availability? I've seen what you describe, which I've mainly chalked up to ethnocentrism, but #2 also might be reasonable for a U.S.-based business if very little of their customer-base is international, for example.

If you navigate to a dropdown list and strike the "U" key, it should take you pretty close to United States (Uganda or Uruguay, maybe, depending on the countries included in the actual list). As an end-user, I like that functionality in various contexts and I use it a lot.

Given that built-in usability accommodation, straight alphabetical listing seems reasonable enough and congruent with most people's experience and expectations.  That's my thinking, anyway, unless you had a database-driven solution and "sniffed" for the geographic location of the user's IP address to present the most likely country as a calculated guess. Because of the coding burden, I'm inclined to let the users use their built-in processor for some of this!  So my vote is for #1.

Jeff
> From: billy at oldworldspices.com
> To: discuss at ixda.org
> Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 08:46:37 -0600
> Subject: [IxDA Discuss] 'Select Country' dropdown
> 
> In filling out various web forms, I have noticed two interaction standards
> specifically related to dropdowns in which the user selects their country of
> residence.
>  
> 1 -- List is alphabetical (placing United States near the end of the list)
>  
> 2 -- Most likely selection(s) at the top of the list, with remainder of list
> alphabetical.
>  
> Which one would you use and what would influence your decision?
>  
>  
> Billy Cox
> Old World Spices
> billy at oldworldspices.com

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