Design Better Forms

July 28, 2003 | 3 Comments

This week’s Gorilla Web Tip — Better Web Forms, talks about designing and building better forms for use on the Web. I don’t go into great detail, but I think there are some good ideas in there and some things that should always be remembered when designing forms for the Web.

It’s all too often that I come across a poorly designed form, and these can really effect the experience of using a site and in the end, the bottom line.

Read Gorilla Web Tip Number Four — Better Web Forms.

Filed under: IA and Usability

Comments

1. JumpTheGap said:

Good tips D. Keith!

The Book’s Corner:
I’ve just read a really good book about interaction design: “Making the web work” - Bob Baxley.
With 2 chapters full of tips and suggestion about forms and views…

Cool staff!

Posted on July 29, 2003 02:15 PM | #

2. Asher said:

A quick note, you mention that you should never duplicate a field in a form. I agree with that, for the most part, however I can think of one application where it might be useable - passwords.

A scenario:

You are joining a site that has a log-in feature. When choosing your password for the site, the initial join-form should have the password field in there twice. Because the input box should be a password one, the user can’t see the letters they are typing, only the count. Consequently, if there is only one password box and the user makes a typo, they’re out of luck. So, use two password boxes and check for equality. If they are the same, proceed with the processing of the form, otherwise put up an error message to the user saying their password entries weren’t the same.

Posted on August 4, 2003 06:43 AM | #