Question: I have a form where users can choose a month and year to display a series of reports.
(there is no need to choose the day - all the reports for that month will be displayed)

What is the best practice for this?

I can think of 3 options: 

1. Two drop downs (one for the month, one for the year) and a "GO" button. 

	* **Pro:** Makes it easier to change the year only ("let's see what was going on in the same month last year")
	* **Con:** Requires another click on "GO" to refresh the page
2. One drop down only, where months are listed as "JAN 2012", "FEB 2012" etc.

	* **Pro:** Can trigger an automated page refresh when the date is changed
	* **Con:** It is potentially difficult to scroll down or up many months
3. Date picker with just month/year

	* **Pro:** Very intuitive
	* **Con:** Requires JavaScript enabled

What do you think?

Answer: 
**Dropdowns and textfields are always faster, assuming that the user can type somewhat quickly and can Tab through the form, and especially if s/he will be fetching multiple reports.**

A date picker is intuitive and fail-safe, but the clicks add up if you're thinking of a standard picker; the ones that I've used only let me scroll through months and years. 

For example, if the current month and year are selected by default and I want the report from August 2010, I'd have to click three times to reach August (from November) and then click three more times to reach 2010 (from 2013). The click-count will really add up if for some reason I need all the monthly reports for 2010 and I have to start from November 2013 each time.

Because I type over 70 wpm, my preference is actually a dropdown for the months (preferably with the months listed as numbers) and either a dropdown or textfield for the year. 

In case any of you don't know, you can select an item from a dropdown menu without clicking it by Tabbing to said menu and then typing the option that you want. The user needs to be somewhat quick in typing "11" to avoid selecting "1" or typing "Jul" to select July instead of June. Numbers are easier to type quickly, obviously.

I've used some forms that don't allow me to quick-type for dropdown menus; in most cases its custom dropdown styling that's the cause. One site doesn't even let me press Enter to submit its form. Don't disable either function.
There are only twelve months but if there are too many years (hundred for age) it's much better to let the user type.