Archive for the ‘Forms’ Category

How To Align Labels On Form Fields

Friday, April 20th, 2007 by Jesper Rønn-Jensen

Form usability revisited. In case you missed it, here is why to prefer top-aligned labels on form elements

Form usability: A smart country list

Thursday, June 22nd, 2006 by Jesper Rønn-Jensen

Here is an example of a smart country selector. From installation of an Ipod Nano. The usability principle is called progressive disclosure: First, display the most typical settings, then give the ability to show all in the special cases. Several things I like with this approach: Progressive disclosure: Don’t clutter screen with options that only matter to […]

How to indicate required or optional form fields

Wednesday, March 29th, 2006 by Thomas Watson Steen

I got a question from Kimberly, one of our reader, in the Sensible Forms: A Form Usability Checklist post where she asks where the best place to display the asterisk indicating a required field in af form is: […] I’d like to see the askterick appear before the label so that a user isn’t forced […]

Sensible Forms: A Form Usability Checklist

Friday, December 23rd, 2005 by Thomas Watson Steen

Don’t you hate when you have typed in a huge form and clicked submit just to realize that you forgot one tiny little required field and that you now have to re-enter all the information again? I just read an article on A List Apart by Brian Crescimanno called “Sensible Forms: A Form Usability Checklist”. It’s a very good and recommendable read. Here are just a few comments on the article spiced up with my own personal rant on the subject.