Combo Boxes
On Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs, use combo boxes in place of option buttons to conserve space or when the user needs to add entries to a list. For more information, see Option Buttons.
When you include combo boxes in your application, use the following guidelines:
- Pre-scroll the list so that the currently selected item is in view, if the state of the list was saved.
- Determine the trade-off between saving space and clearly identifying all application options using option buttons.
- Resolve hardware navigation issues. More than a navigation pad is needed to access all the combo box functionality such as the drop-down list and list selection.
State Attributes
The following illustration shows the appearance of the combo box control in its different states.
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Label Attributes
For labels on a Windows Mobile–based Pocket PC device, use the 9pt Tahoma black font and sentence capitalization.
Development Considerations
Consider the following development conditions when you include combo box controls in an application:
- In some Windows Mobile–based Smartphone specifications, a combo box control is called an item picker.
- Pre-scroll the list so that the currently selected item (if the state was saved) is in view.
- Pressing the Action button on a Windows Mobile–based Smartphone device when the combo box is in focus displays the list and allows the user to select an item.
- Combo boxes have SIP interaction for CBS_DROPDOWNEDIT (editable) style. Consider how this works with a keyboard device. Hardware navigation is a concern with this control because more than a d-pad is needed to access all of the functions, such as cursor movement, drop-down list, select, and change focus.
See Also
User Interface Control Guidelines | Capitalization and Punctuation Guidelines | List Boxes Reference | List View Guidelines
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