TiredGuy

Yesterday I was reviewing an HTML form with my UX colleague, and he said we should change all our <select multiple> elements to collections of checkboxes instead since selecting multiple things with it is just too unintuitive for desktop users.

Shift+click to select consecutive multiple

Ctrl+click to select non-consecutive multiple

Shift+Up/Down to select consecutive multiple with keyboard

Ctrl+Up/Down then release Ctrl, then Space to select non-consecutive multiple with Keyboard

(for mac of course replace Ctrl with Cmd)

This surprised me since it is a built-in html standard element, but kind of makes sense after thinking about it. What do you think? In contrast I do like how it renders on mobile, where it basically does render as a series of checkboxes. Would it be better if desktop browsers redesigned it to look more like mobile?