Additional controls for enhancing your app's usability
At the beginning of the module, you learned what controls are, when you might use them, and how to modify control properties. In this section, you get a more detailed look into some of the controls available from the Controls drop-down menu in the ribbon. On the Insert tab, if you select the Input heading, you get a list of several different controls related to ways a user can input data.
Remember, every control was designed with different use cases in mind. The following information about a few of the controls helps you to decide when you might use each one.
Controls with pre-populated values
Each of these controls allows you to determine the values the user can select from. Use these controls when you want to control the values for your data set. This is often an important consideration for reporting. As a trade-off, you might miss valuable insights that come from free-form answers. Here's a closer look at the differences between each of these controls.
Drop down - This control conserves screen real estate, especially when the list contains a large number of choices. The control takes up only one line unless the user selects the chevron to reveal more choices. This control shows a maximum of 500 items.
Combo box - This control allows you to search for items via text input, or to select an item via a drop-down interface. You can also use this control to select multiple items. Searching occurs in the data source on the SearchField property so performance isn't affected by large data sources. The items in a combo box can be filtered. It's a versatile control and often appears in forms.
List box - This control always shows all available choices (unlike a Dropdown control), and the user can choose more than one item at a time (unlike a Radio control).
Check box - A control that the user can select or deselect to set its value to true or false, respectively. The user can specify a Boolean value by using this familiar control.
Radio - A control showing selectable circles where the user can only select a single item. It's best used with only a few, mutually exclusive options.
Controls for ratings
When you have a specific need for the app users to rate items, the following two controls provide a better experience than free-form text or drop-down controls.
Slider - The user can indicate a value, between a minimum and a maximum value that you specify, by dragging the handle of a slider left-right or up-down, depending on the direction that you choose. The slider control is a quick way to enable numerical data entry without a keyboard.
Rating - In this control, the user can indicate, for example, how much they liked something by selecting some stars.
Other available controls
Toggle - Use this control to enhance the UI of the app. It functions in the same manner as the check box control.
Timer - A control that can determine how your app responds after a certain amount of time passes. For example, determine how long a control appears or navigate to another screen after a certain amount of time passes.
Date Picker - A control that allows you to select a Date from a calendar.
Button - Configure the OnSelect property of a button control to run one or more formulas when the user selects or taps the control. The button control is frequently used to submit data to the data source.