New Features: Linked Dropdowns and Searchable Lists
We've recently added two new controls that help app developers to present their users with a selection of options to choose from.
Linked Dropdowns
Normal dropdowns are generally a useful way of allowing users to make a selection from a range of options. If the number of options is modest, it's often the most logical control to use. But app developers sometimes need to permit a choice between 100's or even 1000's of options - it could be a list of countries, hospitals, regions, or something unique to their particular product and situation.
If you've ever tried selecting from a long list on a dropdown menu, you'll know that the more options there are, the less convenient this tool becomes. When there are a lot of options to choose from, it's easier to use a hierarchical structure to make the selection.
With linked dropdowns, you can allow users to narrow down the options progressively. In this example, to select the city 'Bristol', the user chooses first from a list of regions ('Europe'), then countries ('UK'), and in the final dropdown, the city in question.
Searchable Lists
Sometimes large sets of data don't fall neatly into subcategories this way. You wouldn't want to ask a client to go through a dozen dropdowns to find the right selection. We therefore created an alternative solution in BaseCase: the searchable list.
The searchable list control means that instead of scrolling down through a long list, a user can type in a keyword and the range of options starts to narrow according to what's been typed in.
Regular searchers of Google will be familiar with this kind of filtering; once the list has narrowed enough to include what you're looking for, you can just tap on the option to complete the input. In the below example, you can find the correct selection from a list of almost 3,000 hospitals, automatically populating five other fields with relevant values.
Access the Editor Reference Guide within BaseCase for technical help using linked dropdowns and searchable lists.