Selected/Checked

Question

What would I use these for outside of just practicing my use of them?? What are these really for? If I was building a legit website, what would be the use of checking/selecting something myself? Are these practical elements that are actually used for anything??? I dont understand their existence.

Answer 1

Yes, I think. The benefits of pre-selection are likely depend on the function of the form (register form, game, invoice etc.). For example you build a site for a local service in a capital city. Somebody register for your homepage and you would like to know where he/she lives (for example to issue an invoice) - and you make the capital city as pre-selected. If he/she lives there - most likely, and this is more than a lucky if we talk about a local service - he/she doesn't have to select it.

Answer 2

Look at amazon.com. If you search something they pre-select 'All Departments':

<option selected="selected" value="search-alias=aps">All Departments</option>
<option value="search-alias=arts-crafts-intl-ship">Arts & Crafts</option>
<option value="search-alias=automotive-intl-ship">Automotive</option>
...

And sorting the results page - 'Sort by':

<option value="relevancerank" selected>Featured</option>
<option value="price-asc-rank">Price: Low to High</option>
<option value="price-desc-rank">Price: High to Low</option>
<option value="review-rank">Avg. Customer Review</option>
...

Answer 3

You can use selected/checked if you have a form and you would like to mark an option or more options as "default" (pre-selected). With that option(s)/opportunity you can save some time for your user. The more question in a form the more time need to fill in.

Answer 4

Ohhhh, ok. I'm starting to understand. Thanks!

Answer 5

How would defaulting something help save time? They would still need to pick their own answer if the default wasn't their choice. Are you saying that they could get lucky by having the default be the same as what they themselves would choose, thus saving them a little bit of time?