http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=9561





--- Comment #3 from Calum Benson <calum.benson at sun.com>  2009-06-30 04:48:59 
---
Ah, this old chestnut... unfortunately, nobody has yet invented a GUI control
for the surprisingly common case where you want to allow the user to select
zero or one items from a list, but no more.  (Radio buttons are for 'exactly
one at all times', and checkboxes are for 'zero, one or more'.)

I'm still thinking about this, but the usual options when this situation arises
are:

* Have a selected radio button deselect itself when clicked.  Can explain this
with some text in the dialog, but unfortunately we also have the same situation
on the notification icon menu, where we can't give any explanation.

* Use checkboxes instead of radio buttons, but force them to behave in such a
way that only one (or none) can be selected at a time.  Users will probably
figure this out more quickly than the ability to deselect a radio button, but
it's still an abuse of checkboxes, and can certainly still be confusing.

* Add a button in the dialog (or an extra menu item in the notification icon
menu) for clearing any manual selections.  This is probably the most 'correct'
approach, from an interaction POV, but it feels a bit clunky and adds more
clutter.

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