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@aral

Schrödinger's switches.

@stevensrmiller Only you can see the cat but you still don’t know whether it’s alive or dead.

@aral

Schrödinger was too narrow. That app has moved past him.

@somewhat_damaged They took a toggle switch and added an indeterminate state. I have a legitimate interest in slapping them.

@devnull They definitely are a thing. They’re an abomination :)

They violate the affordance of the control, not to mention conventions and expectations.

A checkbox is either checked or it is not. There is no intermediary indeterminate state. (It can also be disabled.) Ditto for a toggle switch which is modeled on an actual toggle switch; a switch that toggles between two states. If such a switch is stuck in the middle, it’s broken.

@aral ha! As with all abominations sometimes there are places they can be helpful?

I was building out additive permissions in #nodebb when I needed to communicate to the end user that even though a specific privilege was not checked, that in reality, though the additive nature, it may as well have been. (e.g. a particular user group may not have the privilege to post new topics, but if the global registered users group does, then all other groups do too). An indeterminate checkbox was perfect

@aral ... that it was purely aesthetic (so it didn't muck up the backend), was available as an HTML attribute, and enjoyed full support ... was icing on the cake

@gooberking @aral nope, sounds like a perfectly cromulent way to express that state to me

@julian @devnull I despair.

@aral @julian join the dark side, we have cookies with indeterminate icing.