Question on GUI

[Samual Harvey]

As per the instructions:-

The user should be able to select the origin and destination of flights, and the display should update to show only flights that satisfy those criteria. The user must be able to describe enter the string value "any" for the origin, destination, or both, so as to implement a wildcard-like feature.

Is it advisable to use comboboxes for the origin and destination fields. I am currently using textfields for origin and destination. In this case the user is expected to type in the airport name. Is this OK? I mean I have seen people using comboboxes. But the instructions say that user MUST be able to describe enter....(what does describe enter here means?)...if using comboboxes u can only select but not type..AM I missing any thing here...
Or should I use Editable JComboBox???
Thanks.
[ September 01, 2002: Message edited by: Samual Harvey ]

[Nate Johnson]

I used combo boxes and received a good score... I missed 1 point on my GUI and they dont tell you why . Anyway, it is definitely easier to use combo boxes because you know what the values are and can easily check against those values. A textfield could be anything... I also added an "any" choice to the top of the combo for the wildcard requirement.
Hope that helps,

[Michael Morris]

I did what Nate did and got perfect on the GUI so you won't lose points for using combo boxes. And it's just good user interface design to use combo boxes if you already know all the possible choices.

Michael Morris

[Mag Hoehme]

Thanks you for your information (I've also been wondering how to do it).

[Samual Harvey]

Yes I have implemented the Jcomboboxes in editable mode.
I have a question. I am trying to bring in the sorted and unique list of origin and destination. Any ideas how should I do this. I have a vector source for my combo boxes.
I tried using HashSet but it does not work correctly. It removes some duplicates but not all. Is there origin/destination data in db.db different?
Thanks.

[Nate Johnson]

Originally posted by Samual Harvey:
[QB]I have a question. I am trying to bring in the sorted and unique list of origin and destination. Any ideas how should I do this. I have a vector source for my combo boxes.
I tried using HashSet but it does not work correctly. It removes some duplicates but not all.[QB]

I used a TreeSet to get my values for the combo box... it is sorted and a set so I get unique and sorted values. I just walked through the values of the db and tried to add every one, and since it was a set, it rejected duplicates... not the most elegant solution, but Sun did not seem to care

[Michael Morris]

Originally posted by Nate Johnson:
I used a TreeSet...

Now I know you copied off my paper!
Michael Morris

[Samual Harvey]

Yep I tried TreeSet and it works like charm.