Reply To: Cannot create unchecked radio buttons

• squarestarmedia

• April 28, 2016 at 11:38 am

Hi @elliot

My take on it is based on a few things:

• While the purpose of a radio button is that one is always selected, that selection can be exclusively the action of the user, as opposed to anyone else.
• As far as I know, there is no specification that says one member of a group of radio buttons has to be checked by default (I could be wrong on this but the Mozilla Developer reference for the <input> element, linked in my second post above, supports this idea)
• Having no radio checked by default increases the utility of the radio field, by enabling the usage described in earlier posts in this thread
• Having no radio checked by default does not reduce any utility because ACF users can still choose to specify a default to be pre-selected using the current version of the plugin (via the Default Value option).
• An unchecked group of radio buttons creates useful functionality that can only be reproduced using less user-friendly versions (a single option select element, which is less user-friendly because it requires more clicks and doesn’t present all its options at a glance) or a more code-intensive method (adding javascript that unchecks the element after it loads).

I’d love to see an unchecked-by-default radio field in ACF, as I’ve had a few scenarios where it would have been the perfect solution.

Given the perception that one member of a radio group is always selected (expressed by a number of people on this issue), maybe it would be more immediately obvious for admins if there was an “allow null” option.

That said, because the current interface already allows a default item to be set, my feeling is that it would be more intuitive for no option to be pre-selected unless it is specified in the Default Value area.

Thanks