Three stage checkbox?

[Sarah Reichelt]

On 3 Feb 2004, at 10:29 pm, Björnke von Gierke wrote:

> Any form of one object having three stages is confusing and extremely 
> nonstandard. Use 3 radiobuttons instead. Short description about how 
> to do that:
> 1. make 3 radiobuttons, name them "Yes", "No" and "Don't know"
> 2. group them
> 3. use the "hilitedButtonName" of the group like this:
> put the hilitedButtonName into AnswerToThreefoldQuestion
>
> As for the line-trough checkboxes:
> They should only be used in cases where you have a hierarchy of 
> checkboxes and indicate that some, but not all of the checkboxes in 
> the branch of the lined checkbox have been checked.
> See also the screensaver activation preference in Mac OS X. They need 
> to include a lengthy explanation about why there are three states of 
> these checkboxes.
>
While normally I would agree with this and am familiar with the 
techniques for using radio buttons, I have a database with numerous 
fields and then a separate list of 20 items with the 3 options as 
discussed. If I use 3 radio buttons for each item, that gives me a 
display of 60 buttons! In this case, I think the users would be much 
more comfortable with a single button for each item, which can display 
the 3 different states.

Cheers,
Sarah