State Dropdown should go if...

Hi Folks:

I've read everything I could find about the use of state dropdowns but most seem to be concerned about what to do upon error. My question's a little different.

I like having the state dropdowns, as most of our users are from the States or Canada - but when someone tries to register from a country that doesn't use a state field, they get an error, and are asked to provide a state field in the dropdown - but the dropdown is empty except for "Please Select a State"

Anybody have this problem - we're 1.3.7...

Was this a clean install or an upgrade from a previous version?

It was a clean install...

What template is your site based on?
What is the URL?

It sounds like your template is missing some stylesheet components and maybe also some layout components and even some javascript.

The normal operation if there are no states in the pulldown, is to activate another input field where they can type in their state/province/region information.

If your template is missing those components, then you'll have to merge them back in from the core code, which does have it.

If you switch back to the "Classic" template, does it work any differently?

Hi, Doc...

DrByte:

What template is your site based on?
It's a custom template we created, but we based it originally on the default temp, as I recall...
DrByte:

What is the URL?

https://www.essereorganics.com/shop

It sounds like your template is missing some stylesheet components and maybe also some layout components and even some javascript.

Very possible, but we haven't noticed any other odd behaviour...

The normal operation if there are no states in the pulldown, is to activate another input field where they can type in their state/province/region information.

If your template is missing those components, then you'll have to merge them back in from the core code, which does have it.

If you switch back to the "Classic" template, does it work any differently?

That's a great tip - I'll give that a whirl.

Thanks for all the info - makes perfect sense - I just didn't know what the default behaviour was... Now I know what to look for

You are missing a couple of small but very important pieces of the stylesheet -

.hiddenField {
display: none;
}
.visibleField {
display: inline;
}

Great call, Kim - and thanks.

It still seems to require something to be put in the state field or it throws a validation error - I might be missing some js, perhaps.

I wonder about the usability of having a dropdown instructing the user to type in a field below it. I couldn't figure it out, but then again I'm not that smart.

Would a better idea be to simply have the dropdown box dissapear, and the state field label become State, if applicable - and of course change the validation to make it a non-required field. I'm sure this has had some discussion among the development team.

Thanks again for all of you folks with the coding skills to contribute to this project. I'm not griping, just thinking out loud :)