A BRadioButton object draws a labeled, two-state button that's displayed in a group along with other similar buttons. The button itself is a round icon that has a filled center when the BRadioButton is turned on, and is empty when it's off. The label appears next to the icon.

Only one radio button in the group can be on at a time; when the user clicks a button to turn it on, the button that's currently on is turned off. One button in the group must be on at all times; the user can turn a button off only by turning another one on. The button that's on has a value of 1 (B_CONTROL_ON); the others have a value of 0 (B_CONTROL_OFF).

The BRadioButton class handles the interaction between radio buttons in the following way: A direct user action can only turn on a radio button, not turn it off. However, when the user turns a button on, the BRadioButton object turns off all sibling BRadioButtons—that is, all BRadioButtons that have the same parent as the one that was turned on.

This means that a parent view should have no more than one group of radio buttons among its children. Each set of radio buttons should be assigned a separate parent—perhaps an empty BView that simply contains the radio buttons and does no drawing of its own.