RE: Some fodder for marketing, perhaps

midrange-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>   8. Re: Some fodder for marketing, perhaps (Larry Bolhuis)
>
>And one other thing, Just who the *&%$ decided it was more efficient for 
>me to enter MMMMM instead of MI when I'm entering my address on a web 
>page? I have lived in MI since the doctor first smacked me on the 
>backside. I can enter MI and don't need a list of 50 states to pick 
>from. Too bad Minnesota and Missouri and Mississippi we got MI you got 
>something hard to remember. :-)

Minor note...

I'm not exactly sure what this is about.

It's been a few years since the entering of [MI] (or [MIC] or [MIS], etc.) in a 
pull-down list entry field hasn't positioned to the first entry that begins 
with [MI], skipping entries that begin with [MA] or [ME] for example. AFAIK, 
it's always a matter of timing -- if you type the characters quickly, they're 
accepted as a string of characters; if you delay between each character, 
they're assumed to be separate strings.

That is, a GUI can react differently based on _how_ you interact with it. I'm 
no GUI guru, so I don't know if this is a behavior that can be selected nor do 
I know what GUIs support this and what ones don't. It works in all of Windows 
that I try it in (e.g., my Outlook inbox sorted by 'From', I can type [jo] and 
it jumps past [jack] to [john]) and it works in pretty much all web page 
pull-down lists within Netscape since around 4.0 at least and it works in 
Mozilla 1.7.11 today.

This kind of adaptation is a bit more difficult in a 5250 window. (And I really 
hate to believe that, so I'd love someone to show me otherwise.)

It's the fault of the developer if something this simple isn't allowed, not the 
technology.

Tom Liotta