Hacker News Reader

> It isn't really much different than calling them "radio buttons" even though they have nothing to do with radios.

The button set on the face of many dashboard radios would physically pop out the previously pressed button when you pushed a different one in so only one in the set would be selected. The name is pretty obvious if you've used the physical version but I haven't seen one since the 90s.

View on HN

Yes, i know this backstory which is why i mentioned radio buttons: they called like that because of some historical reference, not because they have anything to do with radios.

Similarly comboboxes are called like that because of historical reference (to the combobox control on Win32 that provided the functionality) even though they aren't really a combination of input box and list.

(though one could claim that they are still a combination of a button and a drop-down list, so the name still has some relevance to what is displayed, unlike radio buttons)

> … not because they have anything to do with radios.

They work like radio buttons. How’s that having ‘nothing’ to do with radios?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com