Better Exposed Filters
Better Exposed Filters enhances how users interact with Drupal Views filters by replacing default select boxes with more user-friendly radio buttons or checkboxes. It allows for the addition of helpful elements like description fields and select all/none links, and can even offer AJAX-powered updates and slider widgets for an improved search experience.
The Better Exposed Filters module replaces the Views' default single- or multi-select boxes with radio buttons or checkboxes, respectively. Description fields and Select All/None links can be added to exposed filters to make for a better user experience.
Views Filters is a powerful tool to refine the results returned by a given view. When you expose a filter, you allow the user to interact with the view making it easy to build a customized, advanced search. For example, exposing the node type field as a filter lets your site visitor limit their search queries to just blog entries. Better Exposed Filters gives you greater control over the rendering of exposed filters.
Why use this module? Because it provides a better user experience than the default option. Try telling a client that they should click on an option, then scroll to the next option and ctrl+click on it. Don't just click 'cause you'll lose your first selection. Oh, and ctrl+click again to unselect an option... Yeah, not user-friendly.
People understand checkboxes and radio buttons.
PLEASE RUN THIS ON A LOCAL/TEST ENVIRONMENT FIRST.
Branch support
7.1.x = Active development branch, all fixes need to land here first
7.0.x = Still supported, bug fixes mainly
6.0.x = Security fixes only
Integrations
Modules that provide additional BEF widgets or support for exposed filters in general:
What else can I do with BEF?
The BEF handbook page provides some basic recipes making exposed filters a much better user experience.
- Add help text for each exposed filter
- Tame long lists with scrollable checkbox/radio button lists or select all/none links
- Provide instant feedback by updating the View using AJAX whenever an exposed filter is changed
- Use the jQuery Slider widget for greater-than, less-than or in-between types of filters
If you've got any ideas not covered on the handbook page, add a feature request to the issue queue. You can also rate this module on DrupalModules.
Remembering mikeker - A note on module ownership & maintenance.
In November of 2017, the original author and long-time maintainer of the Better Exposed Filters module Mike Keran (mikeker) was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. He died on January 1st, 2018. Mike was an amazing human, and his death is a great loss to us all. He gave selflessly of his time to several communities including Drupal, and he brought his joy and passion with him everywhere. In honor of his memory, and in order to ensure that Mike’s contributions to Drupal are maintained, several members of the Seattle Drupal community have gotten together and offered to be the maintainers of BEF. We intend to advance the D8 branch where we can and to manage bug fixes and security patches for D7 as needed. Please be patient with us while we work to understand Mike’s intent and the code he left behind.