Hi Sandeep, In many cases the suggestions only appear after the user types 2 or 3 characters. In those cases a visual cue seems very useful. In a recent project, I added a visual cue to the textboxes with type ahead (or auto complete) functionality.
The visual cue I added is not intuitive, but I expect that people will make sense of it after a short period. It has not been tested yet. For sketches see: http://www.ylab.nl/portfolio/kiesbeter In answer to your other question: 2. I don't think it's confusing to have two type of text boxes. In some cases auto complete functionality makes sense (eg: search field), in other cases it doesn't (eg: password phrase, birthday). But, i.m.o., it would be confusing if there were similar fields (eg: two search boxes) without any visual cue when only one of them offers type ahead suggestions. 3. In many cases the list of suggestions is retrieved from a server using Ajax. Thus content is added, after the page has finished loading. As far as I know, screen readers and similar devices can't handle this dynamic content. People relying on these devices don't benefit from the type ahead functionality, but they can still use the text box in the non-enhanced way. Best regards, Yohan. ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
