How do you feel about temporary useless controls in Winforms (hiding or disabling)?

Question

It is very common to have a form with a flag indicating “Use foo”, followed by a text box in which the user can enter the “foo value” that he wants to use. Of course, this text box is only useful if "Use foo" is checked

I don't know how best to deal with this situation:

• Disable textbox (i.e. textboxfoo.Enabled = false;)
• Hide it (i.e. textboxfoo.Visible = false;)
• Let the user enter the value foo if he wants and ignore the value entered.

Is there any best practice that I can follow?

Answer 1

The text box should be disabled.

If the text field is hidden, a visible change in the shape will make the program less user friendly. An example of this is the old (very unpopular) disappearing menu items that used to be in Microsoft Office. People do not want them to move on screens. This is disorienting.

If the user is allowed to enter a useless value, then this gives a false impression that entering the value has some effect.

Answer 2

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Answer 3

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Answer 6

Disable the text box.
This makes the user understand that there is an option that is not available. Hiding it, sometimes the answer of the user "Where did my mailbox go" appears.

Answer 7

Another option is to allow some data to be entered if he wants to, but to automatically check the foo flag if he starts to enter the foo text field.