Hello everyone,

I am following up with more information about what we decided to do about this feature request.

• We revamped the article for Grid Column Template to include an example for two kinds of read-only checkboxes (icon and CheckBox component).
• We created a Knowledge Base article about immediate Grid checkbox editing that occurs in display mode and does not use the built-in edit mode (the page is not live yet, but the link should be correct for future use).

Both changes will be live after the coming release in mid January 2023. Currently you can see the raw markdown and example code in GitHub:

• Grid column template : Documentation
  
• Grid checkbox editing without using edit mode: KB article

We evaluated all the pros and cons for a default checkbox display of boolean values and finally decided not to support it out-of-the-box. I assume this is not the kind of news you expect, so here is our reasoning:

• There are multiple different non-text ways to display boolean data - an icon, an image, a Switch, or even a DropDownList, if the boolean values are nullable.
  
• Disabled checkboxes (in display mode) are not focusable and don't provide a text alternative by default. Both these behaviors make them less accessible, compared to text. The application will still need to take care of related accessibility and possibly, localization.
• Checkboxes are editable input components, rather than pure visualization UI. When used for display only, checkboxes may mislead users that they can edit them on the fly.
• Default checkbox display will be confusing in in-cell editing - the user will have to click once to enter edit mode and then once again to change the value. This does not represent good user experience. A possible solution is to make checkboxes editable in display mode (as in the above KB article). However, this will remove the separation between display and edit mode, which we want to have. Also, this forces developers to have two active editing mechanisms at the same time.
• Due to all above considerations, we believe that the existing template mechanism can provide more flexible and universal means to display boolean data, according to each specific business requirements.

Regards,
Dimo
Progress Telerik

Hi Lee,

The Batch EditMode in the WebForms grid offers similar UX and it requires some special coding to get checkboxes to alter the value on the first click as well.

Typically, a grid quite explicitly differentiates "read" mode from "edit" mode, and there is always an action required to put a record in edit mode so that you can after that change values (say, interact with the checkbox).

Thus, if you want data to be editable in read mode - you need to implement that through the templates the grid offers.

This feature is still something that is a little dubious in my head - there are issues with the UX and the confusion using checkboxes as read-only indicators will cause, and this will definitely have to go through validation by our UX department when it gets to be reviewed in detail.

Regards,
Marin Bratanov
Progress Telerik

Thank you for your feedback, Werner.

Let's see how the community likes the idea.

Some historical data - in other suites we had tried using disabled checkboxes for showing the state of the data, and people often found that confusing - they either expected to be able to check them off immediately (possible through templates, by the way), or they did not see the difference when the cell entered edit mode.

At the moment, an editor template can also give you a dropdown with the true/false texts (which you could then also localize in its data source as desired), and the Template can let you display localized values too, instead of True/False.

What I am saying is that this is achievable at the moment, and for an out-of-the-box feature, we'd need validation of the concepts to ensure they don't end up confusing people. Personally, I think that a way to specify the true/false texts is a feature that should make it even if we keep the current behavior as default.

Regards,
Marin Bratanov
Progress Telerik

Hello Werner,

The recommended way to do that is to use a Template: https://docs.telerik.com/blazor-ui/components/grid/templates#column-template

Having a checkbox in "read" mode would be confusing for the users because a checkbox is an editor - so they would click it and expect the data to update. With a template you could choose how to handle that. For example, disable the checkbox, or add code to update the data on change.

That said, I agree that a checkbox or something like Yes/No is a better representation and I'd suggest you also post here how you imagine this to be exposed for configuration (especially considering the editor concern above).

Regards,
Marin Bratanov
Progress Telerik