[HN Gopher] What UI first distinguished radio buttons from check...
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What UI first distinguished radio buttons from checkboxes with
circles/squares?
Author : azeemba
Score : 64 points
Date : 2025-06-26 12:15 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (retrocomputing.stackexchange.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (retrocomputing.stackexchange.com)
| block_dagger wrote:
| What UI uses circles with checkmarks in them as "OK" buttons? iOS
| 26. Facepalm.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Can I see a screenshot of that? Sounds weird.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| https://i.redd.it/yg2yk2071x7f1.jpeg
| johnisgood wrote:
| Is it not just a circle shaped button?
| LoganDark wrote:
| They said it was a circle with a checkmark in it as an
| "OK" button, which is exactly what it is; they never said
| it was a radio button.
|
| Here is a screenshot of what actual checkboxes and radio
| buttons look like on iOS 26 Beta 2:
| https://imgur.com/a/TwMRW4X
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Isn't that just the same as the close buttons that have
| existed in desktop operating systems for decades?
|
| Eg https://www.computerhope.com/issues/pictures/close-
| window.jp...
|
| I think people have long since learned that if an X is on
| the corner of a window, that is a button which closes that
| window.
| wqweto wrote:
| And Delphi
| aidos wrote:
| More crucially, when did we lose the ability to click and hold on
| the first checkbox and then drag down the list to set them all
| the same way!
|
| > 1982: Dragging through a field of check-boxes flips the state
| of the first and assigns the new state to all other boxes dragged
| through.
| exiguus wrote:
| What comes close are multi-select patterns. Often drop-downs
| where you can use the ALT-Key or dragging to select one or more
| items. Basically the same as in your beloved file-explorer and
| the list view. To archive a select all, usually there is a
| "select all" checkbox.
| earthnail wrote:
| On iOS you can swipe with two fingers to select multiple rows.
| One of the more hidden features. Mentioning it to show that we
| didn't lose it everywhere.
| yokljo wrote:
| Blender does this. It's sick.
| jfengel wrote:
| I don't know when I would use that. If that's something a user
| would do often I probably want some other design component.
|
| In part it's because I don't like check boxes. They don't have
| great feedback about what's going to happen. If I designed a UI
| where someone is likely to check a lot of boxes, I would feel I
| had done something very wrong.
|
| Sometimes it's unavoidable and so the framework might as well
| allow it. And as a user, designers often do things I wouldn't
| have. But I can say I don't miss having that feature.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Maybe when you have e.g. a list of items/pictures/datasets
| you want to select to perform some action with, e.g.
| download, export, or perform some bulk job on?
| jfengel wrote:
| With pictures I'd rather use select features: draw a box,
| shift click, etc.
|
| File choosers usually do something like that, rather than a
| separate check box component. You select the icon rather
| than a check box near the icon, so it's slightly clearer
| what it is you want operated on.
|
| Ideally you'd find other ways to narrow the list. A long
| list of items is a UX disaster waiting to happen. The more
| you can categorize your data beforehand, the better off you
| are. If you can make it all-or-nothing, you're less likely
| to mis-click.
| paradox460 wrote:
| I really wish more file choosers would adopt both.
| Checkboxes are good for making complex, discrete
| selections that persist through accidental clicks. I
| can't tell you the number of times I've made a discrete
| selection of several items, only to lose it because the
| click misregisters on background instead of the icon
| teddyh wrote:
| ISTR a discussion in _Tog on Interface_ on the design choices
| available, with visual examples. This seems to indicate that the
| choice was made there.
| RodgerTheGreat wrote:
| You're thinking of a discussion about a hypothetical variant of
| the radio button, a "one or more" UI element. Discussion here
| on Lobste.rs:
|
| https://lobste.rs/s/v6mkz6/implementing_one_more_ui_componen...
| exiguus wrote:
| When I see UI radio buttons, I often think about old radios,
| dishwashers, or washing machines, where you had two or three
| buttons aligned, and when you press one, the other(s) pop up (if
| they are already down).
| Waterluvian wrote:
| That's precisely the metaphor. A radio as in the radio station
| presets in your car.
| adolph wrote:
| iirc, radio buttons were an early form of bookmark in that
| one would rotate the tuner whose position was annotated by a
| scale marker, and when the radio was tuned as desired, one
| would pull the radio button, then push it in to set that
| button to that tuning. I have a memory of the tactile
| sensation in my fingers.
| nkrisc wrote:
| That is why they are called "radio buttons".
| smallstepforman wrote:
| I actually had a radio with circular radio buttons, which would
| pop back when you selected another option. It had switches
| instead of check boxes.
|
| The one that drives me crazy is slider based checkboxes. I
| never know which side is on/off. Bad UI convention.
|
| And speaking of checkboxes, I want an actual tick mark
| (checkmark), not a X cross. Its called checkbox, not Xbox or
| crossbox, it has to be a checkmark. Also, its a square, not a
| box. Disaster.
| Tmpod wrote:
| You mean those toggles that are very common on settings pages
| (i.e. in Android/iOS)? If they are colored, they are very
| easy to parse, imo, but it never hurts to actually write
| "on"/"off".
|
| Those toggles actually mimic real hardware that used to be
| fairly common. I find those should be preferred over
| checkboxes for anything that takes immediate effect. If they
| don't, and you're collecting a bunch of options at once, in a
| form, then use checkboxes.
| hedora wrote:
| Unlabeled slider switches were never particularly common.
|
| For instance, my old stereo has push button toggles, where
| "in" means "on" (this convention was common because of how
| those switches work), and three way levers with labels on
| two of the three positions (there's no space to label the
| middle position, and it means "default".
| exiguus wrote:
| I remember them on mp3-Player, Walkmans, Microphones and
| even Mobile-Phones. Usually on device that you want to
| lock or particularly turn on and off. And sometimes you
| have to push them hard with the help of your Fingernail.
| cenamus wrote:
| Often enough they are on some websites settings, with
| (almost) no color, but labelled with imperatives. Option X:
| "activate". Do I press to activate, or is it already on?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If they are colored, they are very easy to parse
|
| Relying on color to make something easy to parse is an
| awesome accessibility choice.
| Tmpod wrote:
| They can be colored and adapt to accessability settings,
| including color corrections for different types of
| colorblindness or other impairments. All the toggle
| designs I've seen in the wild also have the space to
| write "on"/"off", a check/cross, etc.
| exiguus wrote:
| I thought about more then two options. For example when you
| have 10 TV or Radio Channels. They are numbered from 1 to
| 10. And only one channel can be chosen. Or for example, you
| can buy concert tickets, maximum is 4 per purchase. You may
| want radio buttons with a number from 1 to 4. Or you have
| to choose a color or size for a t-shirt (Mostly they look
| like buttons but there functionality is radio).
| clickety_clack wrote:
| Some toggles are labeled terribly as well, so it's not
| clear what "on" even means. Or double negatives so it
| demands that extra mental cycle just for the sake of having
| all the sliders to the same side in the default
| configuration.
| Tmpod wrote:
| Oh yeah, those are just objectively awful X)
| fsagx wrote:
| >If they are colored, they are very easy to parse
|
| unless the colors are red and green, and the user happens
| to be red-green colorblind. So yes, always have text
| indicate on/off as well.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Our first TV was like this too - before remote controls.
| fainpul wrote:
| And those buttons needed to be round, because you could turn
| them to tune the radio or TV to a station. Pressing the button
| would then "snap" the tuner back to the preset position of the
| pressed button.
| myself248 wrote:
| No they didn't. My first car had a Blaupunkt radio with
| buttons that worked like that, but they were rectangular.
| hedora wrote:
| I think turning the tuning knob typically popped out the
| preset button, and holding the button down while turning
| the tuning knob changed the preset. I think this could be
| done with a loop of string (to control where the dial arrow
| was) and few springs and catches (to pull the string into
| position when the button was pressed).
|
| I can't imagine how the mechanism would work if each preset
| knob was a tuning knob.
| namibj wrote:
| Just have the knob rotation rotate a tuning element, and
| have the knob pressing switch the tuning element into the
| receiver circuit.
| discostrings wrote:
| Push button light switches that had two circular buttons with
| this behavior also used to be extremely common.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| These are properly called "ganged switches" in the physical
| world.
|
| And yes, radio buttons got their name from the push-button
| ganged switches that were ubiquitous on pre-digital radios.
| namibj wrote:
| My stand fan for aiding in my skin convection cooling by
| forcing convection has 4 buttons, 3 latching power levels and 1
| non-latching off button.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| damn. stack overflow is gone for me. constantly logging me out (6
| digits imaginary points) and showing me cloudflare annoyance
| almost every request. i guess i will just ask AIs trained on
| their content in the end.
| Tmpod wrote:
| Yeah, it has been prompting me with CF CAPTCHAS almost every
| time lately. Didn't use to do that, a few months ago.
| hedora wrote:
| Ouch. Can confirm.
|
| Some paid services I've used for years have started
| aggressively automatically logging me out while I'm driving
| (eg when using the CarPlay app, which doesn't include a login
| screen).
|
| I really wonder what the PM's are thinking.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| > I really wonder what the PM's are thinking.
|
| Increase number of app downloads
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Those captchas take _more_ time than going to my usual LLM
| and asking there. Ironically their anti-AI crusade ends up
| making me use AI _more_.
| pavlov wrote:
| My hunch is that the square vs. circle convention is derived from
| paper forms.
|
| The checkbox has been a common design element in forms for a long
| time. But people can of course tick off all boxes.
|
| So when form designers needed to emphasize that you should only
| select one option, they often used a group of non-boxed options
| together with instruction copy that read "Circle one" (or
| similar).
|
| The name "radio button" of course comes from physical buttons,
| but those were often square. So I think the specific circular
| shape is actually derived from circling an option on paper.
| true_religion wrote:
| I had once thought the circle shape came from scantron style
| examination papers, where you can only fill one circle at a
| time. It's similar even if the origins are probably different.
| vel0city wrote:
| A lot of Scantron-style systems (including a lot of
| Scantrons) support marking multiple.
| eesmith wrote:
| Yes, I had tests in the 1980s which were 'select all that
| apply'.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| Radio buttons were also often round. The age of radio (and
| phenolics) was full of over-inflated round shapes.
|
| But also, when you have a dozen monochromatic pixels to work
| with, 'square' and 'round' are pretty much the only usefully
| distinct shapes. Checkboxes were square for obvious reasons, so
| to distinguish a similar set of controls, you pretty much have
| to use a circle.
|
| I'm pretty sure these concepts moved directly from physical
| systems to digital ones. Every person alive then knew what an
| empty square next to a line of text meant, and everyone
| understood the concept of ganged push-buttons. Just map it onto
| a pixel grid and you're good to go
| qingcharles wrote:
| iOS has a history of using round checkboxes to muddy the waters:
|
| https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/116712/apples-round-c...
|
| (they're not the only offenders in this monstrosity)
| vinceguidry wrote:
| I would think actual radios.
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