Talk:Radio button

Example HTML code
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Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the . Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

no move. Patstuart(talk)(contribs) 14:57, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Radio button → Option button Discuss— Option button is a more modern term to refer to this widget —208.138.31.76 21:36, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Survey
Add "* Support" or "* Oppose" followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion with ~
 * Oppose radio button is more common. 132.205.93.33 01:39, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose 1,170,000 ghits for "radio button", 919,000 for "option button" –   Anþony  talk  04:53, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose Radio button is surely more common. Option button is much less descriptive/specific to the topic of the article. -- AuburnPilot talk 07:33, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose I have a fair background in GUI design and I seldom hear the term "option button." MeekMark 13:00, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose It's definitely a "radio button", and I'd be surprised if all of Anþony's hits for "option button" referred to radio buttons anyway. FiggyBee 00:02, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Discussion
Add any additional comments
 * Moved from uncontested. Vegaswikian 01:18, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure this is a wise move without some discussion. This button is commonly know as radio button so why change?  Vegaswikian 01:18, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Deleting the "See also" section
No idea what this section is about or what it is doing there. I think it could just be deleted. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.9.47.220 (talk) 13:36, 13 February 2007 (UTC).
 * Agreed, I've removed it. -- Bovineone 07:29, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Paragraph about HTML is *wrong*
An interesting aspect of radio buttons, when used in an HTML form, is that if no button in a group is checked, then no name-value pair is passed when the form is submitted. WRONG! W3C specs say user agents (browsers) should check the first element if none is marked checked; and that because not all user agents do that, authors should check a default element anyway.

Fair use rationale for Image:Radiobuttons.png
Image:Radiobuttons.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot 04:52, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Hey, this is like 2 years too late, but I originally made that image. Someone else was nice enough to convert it to PNG but apparently they stripped out my comments that I made that image myself in Interface Builder. It's kind of funny that it ended up deleted. :( Tmorrisey (talk) 04:49, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

En “Juyungo” se cuenta que un muchachito esmeraldeño fue enviado a eso de las cinco de la tarde, hora de oración, a recoger a unas cuantas gallinas que andaban desperdigadas por los contornos. De pronto una linda gallina blanca atrajo la atención del chicuelo. “Cho, cho, jurón, jurón” gritaba, corriendo detrás de ella pero esta era una experta y lo fue llevando hacia el monte. Cuando quiso regresar ya era tarde, estaba perdido. Era la temible “Tunda” que se había convertido en gallina. Pero la Tunda teme a los perros y el solo ladrido de uno de ellos la hace desaparecer; por eso los parientes de la víctima corrieron por los montes con una verdadera jauría, hasta encontrarlo al tercer día, casi muerto del susto e indigesto de tanto camarón. ¡Qué mala es la Tunda!

Dicen que la tunda no es negra, si no negrisísisima como una noche sin luna ni estrellas como una casa sin puertas ni ventanas. La Tunda no tiene bemba, sino bembísima, quiere decir una bemba así y asá. En vez de pierna derecha, maneja una pata de molinillo, que suena ¡tum! Cuando camina por el monte. Más cuando ella se ríe, se ilumina la noche y llueve cocos recién pelados. Vuelan mariposas blancas. Entonces, la gente que ya sabe, se da cuenta que la Tunda anda por allí. Y al más pesado se le aparecen en el camino meneando sus caderas.

A uno de la comunidad se le apareció, no una mujer sino como perico, que cuando él mas caminaba el  Perico se iba más lejos. Tanto que le hizo caminar toda la noche y no lo pudo cazar. Tuvo que amanecer en el monte, cruzando por espinales u matorrales, pero él no se hizo daño porque sentía que alguien le cargaba para pasar las espinas.

La comunidad se preocupó de si desaparición y fueron a buscarle con la madrina, bombo, cununo, guasá. Cuando lo encontraron, tuvieron que echarle agua bendita, porque gritaba, tenía los ojos que se le querían salir y el cuerpo gelatinoso, pues había comido el tapao de camarón hecho por ella. Y esa era la forma de embobar a sus víctimas. Así, cuando ya cumplía sus propósitos los abandonaba e iba por otro.

This radio button does not operate a radio
Techies forget that a lot of people who use Wikipedia aren't. What with internet radio these days, would you blame some Serbian grandmother in Wisconsin for thinking that this is how she might once again hum to the sweet folk songs of her youth? Alas, this 'radio button' will not take her back to the green fields of home. So I have added a sentence close to start of article to disenchant anyone with similar misconceptions. I DO wish editors, especially techies, would adopt my dictum of writing as if that Serbian grandmother in Wisconsin was representative of their audience. Myles325a (talk) 00:37, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Is the photo of the right kind of radio button?
I certainly remember push-button radios, but the radio buttons in a user interface are round, whereas the push-buttons in car radios were flat. I have always thought the term came from the plug-in radio sets of the 1940s and 1950s that had buttons for selecting a band (AM, FM, or sometimes shortwave bands) and sometimes for selecting tone (high or low). These buttons were round, and looked a lot like the buttons in the UI. Edgy4 (talk) 05:24, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Etymology
Any idea where the name "radio button" comes from? --24.82.156.18 (talk) 16:36, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

This seems to be included now. Earthlyreason (talk) 10:36, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

computer bias
"Radio buttons" is commonly used to describe such buttons, whether graphical on a computer, or physical. For example: the physical buttons on my dishwasher.

So I think the article should begin something like: Radio buttons are a group of (usually similar) buttons, either physical, or graphical (for example on a computer screen) of which exactly one can and must be selected at any given time. Selecting a second button will cancel the first. Sometimes the rule "exactly one" is replaced with "at most one". Whether these are also radio buttons is controversial.

The expression derives from the buttons used in older car radios to select amongst pre-set stations. The technical description for such physical buttons is "ganged", specifically "ganged push buttons". Hence "radio buttons" is arguably a synonym for that longer expression.

The gui explanation should be a subsection. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Antifesto (talk • contribs) 00:02, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree. It is always better to move from concrete to abstract. So: - One section on pop-out buttons - One section on interfacing (noting that this is the most common use of the term) - One section noting the fact that this is a manifestation of an xor logic gate. (and link to xor logic gate) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.150.177.249 (talk) 09:55, 26 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I also agree. Came here for the real buttons not for their virtual representation in GUIs. JB. --92.193.147.191 (talk) 18:42, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Source for "option button"
I know the term "radio button". I remember reading about in Turbo Vision programming guides when I write some Pascal code in the 1990s, and these days it appears, for example, in the HTML specification. The latter is pretty authoritative and up to date.

However, this article also mentions "option button". This pops up on hundreds of thousands of websites, but I cannot clearly see an authoritative source. Does it appear as the "official" name in any glossary of computer terms or in a programming reference of any UI development library? Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 09:00, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Unicode ○ ●
At maybe also mention the ○, ● pair (which might toggle colors when seen in reverse video, so one shouldn't say e.g.,"click the black one"!) Jidanni (talk) 00:43, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

History
Two comments: 1. The original mechanical buttons on old radios were there to choose the wave-length (long wave, short wave(s), ultra-short wave) often represented as modulation (AM - amplitude modulation, FM - frequency modulation). What you could NOT do at that time was to choose a preseleted station (as is currently stated in the article). Decades later and almost exclusively for FM there was a short time when that was actually possible but almost immediatedly superseeded by electronic station switching via sensor keys since the mechanics were quite expensive, large and finicky. The image shown also shows a selection per wavelength not per station.

2. I suggest to rename the caption from Ethymology to History. JB. --92.193.147.191 (talk) 18:42, 10 December 2023 (UTC)