[Princeton]

NOTE: I'm just making assumptions here since I really don't know what you're creating.

In Client/Server software you see a lot of times checkboxes that are either Empty (off), Marked (On) or Greyout-Marked (mixed state).

I actually think this is a waste.

It's either 'yes' or 'no'. If it's disabled or not available the answer is 'no'.

Just giving you some ideas:
If I'm creating an interface with many options I would give the user ONLY the YES checkbox (or an 'INCLUDE' List displaying the multiple options with checkbox next to it).

Include:
[] field1
[] field3
[] field5

For a search page you can have however 3 possible options:
- I am looking for rows where the value is 'OFF' for that field.
- I am looking for rows where the value is 'ON' for that field.
- I don't care what the value is for that field.

If the user does not care if the field is displayed it is best to assume that they do not want it. (the less data to fetch the quicker the page will display)

If you need to disable a field I would just use disabled="disabled". However, a better solution would be to just leave it out. Less is always better. :up:

NOTE: I do understand that sometimes the disabled="disabled' is necessary for certain interfaces.