How to let user know that he cannot do an action because he selected too many items
in our internal business application we have a list of results. The user can do two different actions:
- open (and edit) a record
- view the history of a record
Now both of these actions can be performed for one record or for many records at once.
For viewing the history, we have this stupid technical reason for that we have to restrict the maximum selected records to 10. So how can I make this clear to the user?
Basic mockup
There were the following approches:
Hide the history button when >10 records are selected. In my opinion that sucks, because the user might think "WTF did that button go, I knew it was there the last time...:"
Make the button inactive when >10 records are selected. Optional: provide a mouseover/tooltip on that button that indicates WHY it is inactve. My opinion: well... is it "best practice" to require to hover over an inactive button to see why that is so ...?
The button remains active and when clicked, the user gets a message informing him that he may select only up to 10 records. My opinion: definitely not good UX either ;)
Make the button it inactive, when >10 records are selected and put a small text ("max. 10 records selectable") under that very button.
So I was wondering if you got any better ideas, if there is any real "best practice".
Because thos approaches came from our UX expert already...
PS: if there is already a question for that, please show me the way - my hour-long search did not show anything like that.