Make multiple checkbox options more user friendly

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Sindarin
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Posts: 521
Joined: Tue Sep 25, 2007 8:36 am
Location: Greece

Make multiple checkbox options more user friendly

Post by Sindarin »

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Look at this mess, this is supposed to be part of a search engine for cars. There are so many options that both the user (for searching the cars) and the admin (for submitting the cars) have hard time using it. How could I make this checkbox orgy into a more user friendly solution?
Each checkbox represents a separate field in the database, so I thought I could combine them into a single field and instead of using integers, to use full text like "Immobilizer ABS" separated with spaces. But then I would need to use LIKE statements to retrieve these which is not very performance-friendly.

What would be your take on this?
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Jenk
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Location: London

Re: Make multiple checkbox options more user friendly

Post by Jenk »

Separate into related sections, e.g. Transmission, Electronics, etc. Unfortunately, there is always going to be that many options, so the best you can do is just present them nicely. Perhaps you could use keywords in a string, and a FULLTEXT search is not as exspensive as one might think.
josh
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Joined: Wed Feb 11, 2004 3:23 pm
Location: Palm beach, Florida

Re: Make multiple checkbox options more user friendly

Post by josh »

Magento allows hierarchical categories and allowing products to reside in more than one category. Also if it is an automotive website I have a Magento plugin to add a make model year search. http://www.vehiclefits.com I could give you a good discount on it

And I would use an association table or a bitmask before string matching... since that would require the options to be concatenated in a consistent order.
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