Input Control

Input Controls

Joshua Wilkes

Professor Manning

CIS 210

Input Controls

There are four common input controls; dialog box, list box, options button and calendar control (Shelly & Rosenblatt, 2012). All of these are examples of how a user is allowed to enter, change and select data within a program. Each input control is critical in the data field. Having data entered incorrectly will result in errors and a failed program.

A dialog box allows the user to enter information about a task or the system will perform (Shelly & Rosenblatt, 2012). Basically, dialog box is used to input text in a single or double-line field. This type of input control is useful for entering data like names, addresses, screen names etc.

The list box is the most common in websites. This type of input provides a list of choices a user can select from. Since there is a list of predetermined entities, this has strict control of what can be entered into the form. Usually, the list box is limited in options. The list box, for example, could include different selections relevant to any topic, like computer makes. A list box could include; Hewlett Packard, Asus and Dell, but could omit Sony and Samsung. The list box can easily allow for multiple selections.

The option button input control is used within a group. Meaning that there should be more than one option button that has the same name. When option buttons have the same name and different values, only one can be selected at a time (Shelly & Rosenblatt, 2012). This is used when there are few predefined options. Predefined option sets of two are usually not put inside of a selection input control. For example, the options for country would be “U.S.A.” and “Canada.” For this, it is appropriate to use two radio buttons, but more if you are to include more countries. This allows users to enter data with only one click as opposed to two. It is up to the designer to decide if a select input control or a group of option buttons is...