[HN Gopher] Best Practices for Form Design (2008) [pdf]
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       Best Practices for Form Design (2008) [pdf]
        
       Author : Akcium
       Score  : 46 points
       Date   : 2022-08-12 10:25 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (static.lukew.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (static.lukew.com)
        
       | tempusr wrote:
       | It seems like this PDF is to be accompanied by a talk. Is there
       | any video or audio file for this presentation? Otherwise it's
       | just keywords on slides with pictures.
        
       | butz wrote:
       | Information is outdated for current day, when most users are
       | filling forms on "tiny" mobile screens. Now you need to consider
       | mobile keyboards covering good portion of screen, so any
       | additional information still should be visible and not covered by
       | keyboard. And don't forget about auto-fill, which really can save
       | time to fill out standard forms.
        
         | memco wrote:
         | I wouldn't say it's irrelevant but it does change the equation:
         | when that article came out designing for 1024x768 or lower
         | resolution was commonplace. Real-estate was at a premium but
         | the extra width of a 1024 pixel display meant that there was a
         | little more room for side-by-side placement of elements that
         | would probably have vertically stacked before. There wasn't a
         | ton of room to work with so the guidelines were still
         | predicated on knowing your users and their requirements.
        
       | egeozcan wrote:
       | > Use the tabindex attribute to control tabbing order
       | 
       | In the meanwhile, the industry decided that the tabIndex has more
       | cons than pros and should be avoided except for the value 0, for
       | normally non-focusable targets to make them focusable and -1 for
       | vice versa. MDN states:
       | 
       | > Warning: Avoid using tabindex values greater than 0. Doing so
       | makes it difficult for people who rely on assistive technology to
       | navigate and operate page content. Instead, write the document
       | with the elements in a logical sequence.
       | 
       | See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
       | US/docs/Web/HTML/Global_att...
        
       | bluenotebo0k wrote:
       | My least favorite form design "feature" is when they don't allow
       | you to manually enter the date and you have to click a dozen
       | times in a calendar to select the correct date.
        
       | dihydro wrote:
       | One thing that should be standard by now is for addresses in the
       | USA or other countries that have ZIP or Postal codes per
       | municipality or area, the zip/postal should be entered first and
       | auto fill the city if it is unique. There should be very few
       | times where "USA, 20755" doesn't give the correct location.
        
         | leejoramo wrote:
         | This has always bothered me with web forms.
         | 
         | Back in 1992, I developed networked databases applications for
         | macOS using Panorama. It included looking up city and state
         | from ZIP codes. The only times I recall it getting the wrong
         | info was in cases of recent city boundary changes.
         | 
         | Panorama still exists, it was so much better than Access or
         | FileMaker.
         | 
         | https://provue.com
        
         | jimmygrapes wrote:
         | I just implemented the USPS APIs and they all require a street
         | address in order to succeed, due to the need for
         | disambiguation. What I really wanted was something like you
         | describe, because I don't always have a street address so much
         | as a general region. All the other API offerings are way too
         | pricey for my purposes, or look scammy. I ended up scraping
         | Wikipedia and making a generic spreadsheet instead.
        
       | pkrumins wrote:
       | Does anyone know a similar presentation for best practices for
       | pricing page design?
        
       | gotorazor wrote:
       | Looks like the presentation is over ten years old.
       | 
       | Here is the author's URL for this presentation.
       | 
       | https://www.lukew.com/presos/preso.asp?19#events
       | 
       | He has place and dates for all the instances where he presented
       | it. Maybe there will be something on YouTube.
       | 
       | But these are back to 2007, digital video cameras and production
       | standards for tech conferences won't be to the same level as
       | those today.
        
         | irq-1 wrote:
         | Pre-mobile! Reading the first sections on label placement was
         | strange experience.
        
         | jonwinstanley wrote:
         | I remember this when it came out the first time :-)
        
         | memco wrote:
         | My two favorite articles from that era are from a list apart:
         | https://alistapart.com/article/prettyaccessibleforms/ and site
         | point: https://www.sitepoint.com/fancy-form-design-css/.
         | 
         | Long form articles were pretty much the norm for these types of
         | educational content and videos were rare. CSS-tricks and
         | smashing magazine came along a bit later with some good content
         | also. Haven't found video equivalents of any of it but I
         | haven't looked much either.
        
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       (page generated 2022-08-15 23:02 UTC)