http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Forms A listing of the most recently indexed works about Forms in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Forms http://tc.eserver.org/35705.html http://tc.eserver.org/35705.html Be it web-based applications or online services, they are taking the Internet by storm. Many websites introducing these services are created and launched to get users to sign up and use the software (hopefully for a long-term). The question is: How do we get users from the unfamiliar zone into the interested zone and subsequently becoming a first time use? http://tc.eserver.org/35397.html http://tc.eserver.org/35397.html Next time you consider adding a reset button to a form, think it through very carefully first. Does the user really benefit from being able to reset the form? Is being able to reset the form to its initial state so valuable that it is worth the risk of the user losing the data they have entered? Probably not. http://tc.eserver.org/35291.html http://tc.eserver.org/35291.html The issue of accidentally activating the browser back button through the keyboard while interacting with a long web form is applicable to users across expertise levels. The time and effort wasted by the user can be said as proportional to the number of input fields filled by the user before accidentally exiting the page. Since no application feedback indicating cause of the error to the user is provided, depending upon user expertise, the user may or may not realize the cause of the error. Realizing what went wrong does not guarantee the possibility of reverting the error either. This leads to unnecessary loss in form conversions despite favorable user intent. A solution to resolve this issue (that the author hopes becomes standard practice) to plug the hole for lost conversion that translates to big numbers in absolute terms for high traffic websites is also provided. http://tc.eserver.org/35168.html http://tc.eserver.org/35168.html Inline validation gives people several types of real-time feedback: It can confirm an appropriate answer, suggest valid answers, and provide regular updates to help people stay within necessary limits. These bits of feedback can be presented before, during and / or after users provide answers. http://tc.eserver.org/34508.html http://tc.eserver.org/34508.html Have you ever found it difficult to fill out a seemingly simple form? Jarrett explains how to create questions that are easy to understand and accessible by all, focusing on details, the difference between prompts and fully formed questions, questions that need more explanation, and other aspects. http://tc.eserver.org/34457.html http://tc.eserver.org/34457.html Usability is central to the successful completion of online forms. Whether applying for insurance, completing tax returns or simply making an online purchase, a poorly designed or confusing form can lead to users abandoning the process. The following are some tips when designing online forms. http://tc.eserver.org/34259.html http://tc.eserver.org/34259.html Attempting to use CSS to make form controls look similar across browsers and operating systems in an exercise in futility. It simply cannot be done. Because of all this I spent way too much time creating a total of 224 screenshots showing the effects of various CSS rules applied to form controls. http://tc.eserver.org/34001.html http://tc.eserver.org/34001.html Forms are often the most tricky aspect of web development for beginners to get their head around, largely because it means stepping out of the comfort zone of one-way information - no longer are you simply presenting information at the person viewing your site, now you are asking for input, for feedback that you have to process in some way. And just as it may be difficult for HTML beginners to understand just how they handle form data, so is it difficult to understand some of the issues relating to accessibility. http://tc.eserver.org/33829.html http://tc.eserver.org/33829.html This paper describes a platform for the XML definition of secure, intelligent web-based applications. XForms provides a powerful model-view-controller (MVC) pattern that may best be described as a cause-and-effect XML processing model originated by XFDL. This paper describes a new version of XFDL that consumes, or skins, XForms. Hence, this paper presents the first integration of the standardized XML markup for expressing the core processing of a web-based form applications (XForms) with a host language (XFDL) that offers security, precision presentation, a document-centric capability, and other features that contribute to a more rich user experience. http://tc.eserver.org/33757.html http://tc.eserver.org/33757.html Conflict resolution is required wherever we have multiple concurrent changes to a single information set. In practical terms this applies, for example, to concurrent editing environments, to replicated database instances which are being updated independently, to address-book changes on a PDA that must be merged into a master database that has itself been changed. Resolving these conflicts very often requires human intervention. This paper looks at the use of XML forms of various types to reduce the drudgery involved and to take advantage some of the greatest strengths of XML, using pipelining and easily-understood representations to allow a decision-maker to work with minimal drag. http://tc.eserver.org/33381.html http://tc.eserver.org/33381.html Over at Smiley Cat Web Design they’ve put together a showcase of many different login and registration forms. While you’re there, take a look at some of the other showcases listed in the sidebar. They have sets for calendars and date pickers, footers, search boxes, and many more. http://tc.eserver.org/33123.html http://tc.eserver.org/33123.html What do you really need to know in your form process? Be brutal. Don't include stuff that your sales team would like. Completing a form is rarely (if ever) the goal in and of itself. The goal is to entice the user into a deeper relationship (of some sort) with your web site. Notice that I didn't say that the goal was to complete a transaction or make a sale. That is evidence of the deeper relationship, not the vehicle by which you persuade your users. http://tc.eserver.org/33124.html http://tc.eserver.org/33124.html Websites have become less accessible and more complex over time according to recent studies. Learn how to buck the trend by creating fast, accessible CSS forms that work with modern browsers and gracefully degrade. http://tc.eserver.org/33131.html http://tc.eserver.org/33131.html This document is concerned with what the user of a Website form "sees" and interacts with. It outlines how you can create forms for the Web that are more accessible and describes the appropriate use of. http://tc.eserver.org/33132.html http://tc.eserver.org/33132.html Ask anyone who has had to fix a Website that's littered with accessibility howlers, and top-most in their list of problems encountered will be forms, closely followed by tables. These two topics always seem to present the most difficulties, but they needn't be a problem. For the most part, forms are a problem because the extra accessibility tags are simply not known to the Web designer -- after all, it looks right, it seems to work... what's the problem? Only by switching off the monitor and using a screen-reader can our oblivious Web developer understand the issues. http://tc.eserver.org/33133.html http://tc.eserver.org/33133.html You are writing captions or labels for fields in forms, for example 'Name' or 'Date of birth'. Should they be finished with a colon, or not? http://tc.eserver.org/33134.html http://tc.eserver.org/33134.html Effective form design is a great way to boost conversion rates. Jason Fried and Matthew Linderman share with us the secret of how to create attractive and functional forms. http://tc.eserver.org/33135.html http://tc.eserver.org/33135.html Urgh – it’s what we all think when presented with a form to complete, whether printed or online. What is it about forms that make us feel this way? Maybe, the history of being officious and complicated, a drain on our time, and they often make us feel stressed. As forms represent a business or an organisation, all these feelings are subsequently associated with that organisation – not good for customer relations or reputation! http://tc.eserver.org/32751.html http://tc.eserver.org/32751.html You may not realize it, but there are times when each variant of form layout can have a positive or negative impact on how the form (and your site) is used or perceived. And applying the right variant at the right time is one of the simplest things you can do to improve your user’s experiences. http://tc.eserver.org/32660.html http://tc.eserver.org/32660.html Forms. Is there any other word that strikes as much fear into the hearts of grown web designers? There's also an improperly held belief that the only way you can guarantee that a form displays properly is by using tables. All of the code reproduced here for forms is standards-based, semantic markup, so you've got no excuse for relying on tables now! http://tc.eserver.org/32551.html http://tc.eserver.org/32551.html HTML hasn't really been updated since HTML version 4 was released back in 1998. However, the WHATWG community has been working on HTML since 2004 and this will hopefully result in some much needed improvements. This article shows some of the new functionality of the proposed form chapter of HTML5: Web Forms 2. http://tc.eserver.org/32498.html http://tc.eserver.org/32498.html Explains some of the technical reasons for form controls being so hard to style consistently across platforms with CSS. Also asks a lot of good questions related to how various CSS properties should affect form controls if browsers would let them. http://tc.eserver.org/32425.html http://tc.eserver.org/32425.html Just about every website needs some forms. Sometimes there are many of them, sometimes just a single contact form. Regardless of their number, they need to be usable and accessible, which can sometimes be a little more work than it would be if theory and practice aligned a little better. http://tc.eserver.org/32453.html http://tc.eserver.org/32453.html There are plenty of articles and tutorials that describe how to create accessible HTML forms out there. Despite that it is common to come across forms that do not use a single label element and forms that use label elements but do so incorrectly. http://tc.eserver.org/32460.html http://tc.eserver.org/32460.html Few people will argue against the need to explain to users what they are supposed to enter into text input fields. One common workaround when no label can be displayed is to put some placeholder text in the text field and let that act as the label.This approach works reasonably well, but it burdens the user with having to clear the input before entering their own text, which can lead to frustration and mistakes. An approach that avoids that is using JavaScript to clear the input when it receives focus. Since that won’t work when JavaScript support is missing, JavaScript should be used to insert the placeholder text as well. http://tc.eserver.org/32473.html http://tc.eserver.org/32473.html Very few designers appreciate the aesthetic of a text input field, and styling form fields cross-browser on any Web site can be a tedious and frustrating experience. The compromise typically involves applying a simple colored border and background to the fields. I think this is the right approach for Web sites and applications that are form field intensive, but the search box plays a special role in the design, and it deserves a little more attention. http://tc.eserver.org/32379.html http://tc.eserver.org/32379.html There are a million websites out there. There are a million email service providers out there. How do you ensure that you gain the right audience to join your service? What are those factors that will help users move ahead and become your loyal customer? Part of the answer has to do with the first step: Registration! http://tc.eserver.org/32076.html http://tc.eserver.org/32076.html So you’ve been to about a million websites at this point in your cyber life. There’s a little bit of everything in the online jungle, with every different imaginable style, color, and layout. Everyone is trying to be different, trying to separate themselves from the pack. So why is it that nearly every website, from the coolest of the cool to the worst of the worst, seem to still be using the same, ugly form fields that are default. Well, that’s about to change, at least on your website. I’m going to give you some quick and easy tips to spice up your form fields and set your website apart from the rest. http://tc.eserver.org/31955.html http://tc.eserver.org/31955.html “Advanced forms” are rarely that. A more fitting name would be “Overwhelming and confusing forms”. But with Jason Long’s clever approach to streamlining a screen full of checkboxes, you might just be able to once again look fondly on your forms. http://tc.eserver.org/31878.html http://tc.eserver.org/31878.html As enablers of online conversations between businesses and customers, Web forms are often responsible for gathering critical information—email addresses for continued communications, mailing addresses for product shipments, and billing information for payment processing to name just a few. So it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that one of the most common questions I get asked about Web form design is: “How do I deal with international addresses?” http://tc.eserver.org/31829.html http://tc.eserver.org/31829.html What is likely to win the most converts is the joy Wroblewski takes in designing. This impression becomes clear as you page through the book. He isn’t just an ardent evangelizer, following the rituals of going to conferences selling snake oil. He’s been there in the trenches, just like you; he’s done this a hundred, maybe a thousand times. He’s tested these ideas and provides a framework for you to use from day one. Half the battle in good form design is defending your decisions to stakeholders. http://tc.eserver.org/31072.html http://tc.eserver.org/31072.html You load a new web service, eager to dive in and start engaging, and what's the first thing that greets you? A sign-up form. We can do better, says Luke Wroblewski, author of Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks. Via a technique of "gradual engagment," we can get people using and caring about our web services instead of frustrating them (or sending them to a competitor's site) by forcing them to fill out a sign-up form first. http://tc.eserver.org/30406.html http://tc.eserver.org/30406.html Even the smallest adjustments to a page's design, layout, and content can make a major improvement in the overall quality of the page. Taking a fresh look at sections of a site that have been ignored for a while can give you an entirely new perspective. By making small incremental changes and testing them against real world scenarios, we can more easily focus on continuous improvement without going back to square one every time. http://tc.eserver.org/30410.html http://tc.eserver.org/30410.html The humble contact form: It's the cornerstone of nearly every website, from the humble personal blog right up to the corporate megasite--and a billion small business sites in-between. In the early years of operating a website, we were happy to put our shiny new email address out there for anyone to mailto, but the rise of the spammer has made us justifiably wary of publicizing our contact details--enter the contact form. http://tc.eserver.org/30193.html http://tc.eserver.org/30193.html One hundred and one tips for designing digital forms using Adobe Acrobat. http://tc.eserver.org/30029.html http://tc.eserver.org/30029.html A chain of five errors led to Scott Adams losing his work. Not one of those errors was his. They had been made months and even years before Scott Adams ever started work on his blog. His was an accident waiting to happen, an accident that has almost certainly befallen a large number of other individuals who have had the misfortune to use the same software. http://tc.eserver.org/29930.html http://tc.eserver.org/29930.html When using PDF forms, it's possible to export, store and import the data in Form Data Format (FDF). Since an FDF file only includes the form data and not the form itself, it is much smaller and more lightweight that the complete PDF form, making it more efficient to manipulate. This tip explains how to export and import FDF data using Acrobat. http://tc.eserver.org/29664.html http://tc.eserver.org/29664.html Internet forms can be found on all kinds of sites that enable visitors to interact with companies, such as order forms in online shops or application forms on job boards. These forms ask visitors to fill out their name and address, which in many cases results in user errors as a consequence of design failures. In this article we report on a research project using event logs to analyze user errors and optimize the design of name and address forms. Two factors are identified as crucial for usability: the sequence of elements in the name field and the spatial orientation in the address field. http://tc.eserver.org/29423.html http://tc.eserver.org/29423.html The trick is to make data-entry forms clear enough that workers understand what you require of them without having to ask. This understanding alone can drastically reduce the frequency of errors, but to turn that understanding into a payback, you'll have to design a label for each field that is truly obvious to the workers. Information designers call these clues "affordances", and if you're lucky enough to have technical writers or editors in your organization, you can probably enlist their aid in designing these clues. http://tc.eserver.org/29105.html http://tc.eserver.org/29105.html This article studies the stylistic variation in the design of administrative forms in three European countries--the United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain-- through the linguistic analysis of a small corpus of multilingual administrative forms dealing with pension benefits and other kinds of allowances written in four different languages--English, Spanish, Italian, and German. The analysis included both monolingual administrative forms--written in English, Spanish, and Italian--and bilingual Italian/German and Italian/ English forms. The purpose of the study was to search for cross-linguistic regularities in the design of administrative forms which would enable their characterization as a genre, both in terms of its staging structure and of the linguistic and formatting features of the elements which configure it as such. The analysis performed on the small corpus yielded interesting stylistic differences and tendencies in the design of comparable administrative forms in the different countries, characterized by different socio-cultural backgrounds. It is suggested that these differences are a reflection of the social attitudes of the different administrations toward their citizens. http://tc.eserver.org/28904.html http://tc.eserver.org/28904.html Many Web application designers strive to reduce the amount of instructional text that appears in the user interfaces they create. A likely part of their motivation is the perception that, if explaining how to use something requires too much instruction, it probably isn't that easy to use and, therefore, has room for improvement in its design. Another motivating factor might be the tendency for people not to read any on-screen instructions, just like they tend not to read product manuals. This type of thinking also applies to Web forms. When possible, designers strive to utilize a minimal amount of text to explain how users should fill in the different input fields in a form. http://tc.eserver.org/28784.html http://tc.eserver.org/28784.html Jarrett is one of the authors of User Interface Design and Evaluation, a beginning text for technical communicators moving into user interface design. Jarrett says this book is a perfect start for users looking to add usability basics to their toolbox. She also talks about forms, and how the best forms are ones you barely notice. http://tc.eserver.org/28689.html http://tc.eserver.org/28689.html Placing a label above an input field works better in most cases, because users aren't forced to look separately at the label and the input field. Be careful to visually separate the label for the next input field from the previous input field. http://tc.eserver.org/28685.html http://tc.eserver.org/28685.html Many articles have been written on what is probably the single most ubiquitous interface element within Web applications today: the form. Forms justifiably get a lot of attention because their design is critical to successfully gathering input from users. Registration forms are the gatekeepers to community membership. Checkout forms are how eCommerce vendors close deals. But what goes in must eventually come out, and the information users provide to Web applications often makes its way back to users in the form of tabular data. http://tc.eserver.org/28659.html http://tc.eserver.org/28659.html Successful Web applications tend to grow--both in terms of capability and complexity. And this increasing complexity is often passed on to and absorbed by a Web application's forms. In addition to needing more input fields, labels, and Help text, forms with a growing number of options may also require selection-dependent inputs. http://tc.eserver.org/28529.html http://tc.eserver.org/28529.html Sometimes there's a lot more to simple than meets the eye. To the customer, this is just a few obvious words in a small box. But really, that's the point. http://tc.eserver.org/28456.html http://tc.eserver.org/28456.html Space constraints can put the squeeze on accessibility and usability. Mike Brittain shares his method for making itty-bitty forms more accessible and easier to use. http://tc.eserver.org/28449.html http://tc.eserver.org/28449.html This worked example creates a compact form with multiple similar records, with the familiar appearance of a datasheet. http://tc.eserver.org/28450.html http://tc.eserver.org/28450.html This worked example applies styling and functionality to a basic grid of data to produce a simple form control that's a pleasure to use. http://tc.eserver.org/27855.html http://tc.eserver.org/27855.html Forms are a pain. You can make them pretty, make them accessible, or go a little crazy trying to achieve both. Nick Rigby offers a happy solution. http://tc.eserver.org/27678.html http://tc.eserver.org/27678.html Completing a form is rarely (if ever) the goal in and of itself. The goal is to entice the user into a deeper relationship (of some sort) with your web site. Notice that I didn't say that the goal was to complete a transaction or make a sale. http://tc.eserver.org/27682.html http://tc.eserver.org/27682.html The most monotonous entities in the known universe, forms, are a staple of every web programmer's balanced diet. Whether we like them or not, forms are the gatekeepers to our site’s goodies and often their design alone determines whether a user will try what you’re selling or simply walk away. Without pomp or circumstance, here are ten tips to transform your plain vanilla into double chocolate chunk with marshmallows. http://tc.eserver.org/27619.html http://tc.eserver.org/27619.html One of the most important aspects of web design is getting information from the viewer to the webmaster. This is where HTML forms are used. If you have been on the internet, you have seen forms before. Google uses them for search queries, Amazon uses them for shipping and credit card information, your bank uses them for you to login. Almost every site on the web has a type of form somewhere. We can't live without forms. How about changing the forms based on input by the viewer? This is where interactive forms using Javascript and HTML can help. http://tc.eserver.org/27624.html http://tc.eserver.org/27624.html Web developers loathe the task of building forms almost as much as users loathe having to fill them in. These are both unfortunate facts of the Web, but some smart JavaScript and intelligent CSS can go a long way to remedying the situation. In this article, I'll introduce a number of simple tricks for improving the usability of forms, and hopefully inspire you to improve on them and create your own. http://tc.eserver.org/27507.html http://tc.eserver.org/27507.html You really can color your scrollbars and have a change of scenery from the basic gray or other browser default. It just takes a few snippets of CSS markup, which you'll learn how to do in this tutorial. http://tc.eserver.org/27482.html http://tc.eserver.org/27482.html To demonstrate an example of some accessibility issues in HTML Forms, the following content intentionally has accessibility errors. http://tc.eserver.org/27463.html http://tc.eserver.org/27463.html Poorly designed information-gathering forms drive up operating costs. Good design depends on a careful analysis of two users: Form-Fillers and Form Readers. Both types ofform user benefit if the form designer follows four principles of overall design. Guidelines for answer sections and user testing can also help designers produce more effective forms. Evaluation of existing forms can lead to successful revision so that costly mistakes can be avoided. http://tc.eserver.org/27418.html http://tc.eserver.org/27418.html Two relatively common usability problems with web forms are textareas that are too small, and dropdown lists being clumsy to use for some people. This Greasemonkey user script automatically assigns links above each textarea so that it can be resized, and automatically expands dropdown lists. The script is easily configurable, so you can choose not to expand dropdown lists, or determine the maximum number of items you want displayed in a dropdown list, or have graphic or text links for resizing textarea form controls. http://tc.eserver.org/27293.html http://tc.eserver.org/27293.html This approach uses Dynamic HTML (DHTML), which has several benefits over using IFRAMES to make life a bit easier for the users of your site. First, DHTML allows for more flexible formatting than IFRAMEs permit. You can apply background images, borders, fonts, and all the other features you’ve learned to expect from HTML and Cascading Style Sheets to DHTML objects. In contrast, IFRAMES have almost no configurable features. Second, if someone fills out one form, switches to another, then switches back, there’s a good chance that the browser will lose the information that was initially entered. This problem doesn’t exist in the DHTML solution. Third, with DHTML you can do tricky things like clipping and moving the form around the page. You could do these things by combining IFRAMES and DHTML, but you might as well just use DHTML in the first place. http://tc.eserver.org/27299.html http://tc.eserver.org/27299.html Any sort of interactive site is going to have form inputs — a place where your users input who they are, what they want to buy, where they live, and so forth. This data is passed to whatever handles your back end — a Perl CGI script, a PHP engine, a database like Oracle, or some other technology you’ve invested in. Whatever system is back there, you can bet that it doesn’t appreciate having its time wasted with bogus information, and chances are the user doesn’t appreciate it either. If the data the user submits to the CGI contains an error, there will be a noticeable lag — typically several seconds — before the information travels over the Internet to the server, is examined on the server, and then returns to the user along with an irritating error message. If you run a little preliminary validation of the user’s form input before the form is submitted, there will be no wait time. Client-side validation is instantaneous because it doesn’t have to transmit any data. JavaScript catches any erroneous data the user enters before it goes anywhere. http://tc.eserver.org/27302.html http://tc.eserver.org/27302.html This script uses dynamic HTML (DHTML) to pop open a box with info in it when you click on a link. In my demo I’ve used this to pop up contextual help about filling in a form. It could also be used, for example, to give pop-up definitions for terms in an article. In both cases, it makes sense to give the information in context, modelessly. Likewise, this solution avoids the problems of statelessness and latency. http://tc.eserver.org/27219.html http://tc.eserver.org/27219.html This example will step you through the process of creating a template that contains an autonew macro which, when you create a new document from the template, will cause a Userform to be displayed, into which you can enter some information that you want to appear in the document. http://tc.eserver.org/26956.html http://tc.eserver.org/26956.html 在‘三层模型’中，一个表单有三种属性：感知（布局）、对话（问题和回答）、和关系（任务的结构）。 http://tc.eserver.org/26782.html http://tc.eserver.org/26782.html After the 2000 election, Design for Democracy worked with election officials in Illinois, Oregon and Nevada to design ballots, polling place signage, registration forms and other election materials. The election design system establishes a visual style, use of color, and an approach to illustrating instructions that make the ballot and polling place more usable. http://tc.eserver.org/26634.html http://tc.eserver.org/26634.html Once an online form goes beyond two screenfulls, it's often a sign that the underlying functionality is better supported by an application, which offers a more interactive user experience. http://tc.eserver.org/26569.html http://tc.eserver.org/26569.html Sometimes it’s the little things that drive you nuts. As many of us have probably noticed during this season of holiday shopping, usability problems in online forms can be infuriating. Brian Crescimanno helps solve the problem with a checklist of form-usability recommendations. http://tc.eserver.org/26396.html http://tc.eserver.org/26396.html Why do people say 'I’m not good with forms' or 'I don’t like forms' when a form is only a piece of paper, or a screen, with some printing on it? There must be something special about forms that inspires these comments. http://tc.eserver.org/26330.html http://tc.eserver.org/26330.html This article describes a technique that takes input from a form text field and uses it to bring matching options to the top in a dropdown list. http://tc.eserver.org/25499.html http://tc.eserver.org/25499.html Invoices that obfuscate information, incorrectly state terms or arrive incomplete can be a massive headache for all parties. These mistakes will only delay the payment process, so it is critical you produce invoices that clearly deliver information your client will need. http://tc.eserver.org/25462.html http://tc.eserver.org/25462.html When people design Web forms, they often overlook some great sources of professional expertise in the world -- the existence of form design techniques with which nearly all users are familiar. This month, the cranky user looks at form design and management. http://tc.eserver.org/25466.html http://tc.eserver.org/25466.html Reduce the number of database hits and improve your Web application's efficiency when you load common shared list values only once. In this code-filled article, learn to load the values for drop-down lists when your Web application starts and then to share these loaded list values among all the users of your application. http://tc.eserver.org/24962.html http://tc.eserver.org/24962.html A form is usable when it builds an effective communication bridge between your clients and your data entry staff. A usable form is readable, concise, and contains appropriate pictures and graphic elements. The steps in creating a usable form are the following: (1) Create a prototype. (2) Examine the extremes. (3) Produce the forms. (4) Fine tune the forms. http://tc.eserver.org/24872.html http://tc.eserver.org/24872.html Everyone hates forms--users hate filling them out, and writers hate creating them. But forms offer writers a unique opportunity for rewarding work. Jarrett suggests ways to improve forms--and, possibly, users' lives. http://tc.eserver.org/24552.html http://tc.eserver.org/24552.html Prevent major user annoyance by checking all your web forms: feedback, comment posting, product orders, newsletter sign-up, newsletter opt-in, unsubscribe option, site registration, etc. When a form won't submit, or otherwise fails, after user inputs lots of data, it causes extreme ill will toward your web site, and may be legal violation (UCE laws). http://tc.eserver.org/23104.html http://tc.eserver.org/23104.html Today's Web forms are hopelessly tied to the original GUI of NCSA Mosaic for X Windows, circa 1994. http://tc.eserver.org/22959.html http://tc.eserver.org/22959.html When we talk about the accessibility of forms, we are usually referring about their accessibility to screen readers and the visually impaired. People with other types of disabilities generally are less affected by 'faulty' forms that are missing some of the HTML accessibility features. http://tc.eserver.org/22954.html http://tc.eserver.org/22954.html Ask anyone who has had to fix a Website that's littered with accessibility howlers, and top-most in their list of problems encountered will be forms, closely followed by tables. These two topics always seem to present the most difficulties, but they needn't be a problem. For the most part, forms are a problem because the extra accessibility tags are simply not known to the Web designer -- after all, it looks right, it seems to work... what's the problem? Only by switching off the monitor and using a screen-reader can our oblivious Web developer understand the issues. http://tc.eserver.org/22777.html http://tc.eserver.org/22777.html What’s the easiest way to e-mail a PDF form and have people fill it out? http://tc.eserver.org/22464.html http://tc.eserver.org/22464.html Follow these seven steps to make your forms - and your users - happy. http://tc.eserver.org/22385.html http://tc.eserver.org/22385.html Too many required choices, too much mouse moving, too weak words, and less obvious options make address search hard on Krak.dk. http://tc.eserver.org/21901.html http://tc.eserver.org/21901.html The Form tool as we know has been abandoned. There is now a Field tool which is subdivided into tools for the individual field types. http://tc.eserver.org/21056.html http://tc.eserver.org/21056.html Online product registration forms can make customer service easier for the manufacturer and more valuable to the customer. http://tc.eserver.org/21049.html http://tc.eserver.org/21049.html People don't like filling out forms in the real world, and especially not while using the web. Forms are complicated, distracting, and take control away from the user. That is, unless they're designed effectively. http://tc.eserver.org/20643.html http://tc.eserver.org/20643.html Creating an online form can present developers with many challenges. This case study reviews how a paper-based form was taken through the usability engineering process to develop a functional online version. We discuss the steps in planning and research, prototype development, test design, and the usability test results. http://tc.eserver.org/20476.html http://tc.eserver.org/20476.html The ultimate determinant of a good form is whether it enables you to get the information you want. To achieve this purpose, you must look at the form from the point of view of the person completing it. http://tc.eserver.org/20236.html http://tc.eserver.org/20236.html In this quick 'n easy tutorial, Short shows how to increase the popularity of your site by building a simple 'Send to Friend' form in HTML and ASP. http://tc.eserver.org/20042.html http://tc.eserver.org/20042.html In het boek zijn vanaf pagina 375 in appendix A een aantal checklists opgenomen die kunnen dienen als controle bij het ontwerp van uw eigen gebruikersvriendelijke pagina's. U kunt deze checklists hier downloaden. http://tc.eserver.org/19850.html http://tc.eserver.org/19850.html Why do people say 'I’m not good with forms' or 'I don’t like forms' when a form is only a piece of paper, or a screen, with some printing on it? There must be something special about forms that inspires these comments. The 'three-layer model” considers forms from three points of view: perceptual (layout), conversational (questions and answers) and relationship (the structure of the task). Analysing a form using the three layers helps to un-pick its problems, and to suggest ways of making it more usable. http://tc.eserver.org/19384.html http://tc.eserver.org/19384.html Mohr explains how to create User Forms--macro-controlled user interfaces that employ standard graphical user interface components--for collecting information from users that can be saved as character-delimited text files and fed into a database. http://tc.eserver.org/19333.html http://tc.eserver.org/19333.html Forms are often an essential element of an application or website. In fact they are the most popular way of gathering information or encouraging user feedback. Given the sort of information that forms are used to collect (such as registering for a service, or placing an order), the importance of ease-of-use hardly needs to be emphasised. These are tasks central to the success of many online businesses. http://tc.eserver.org/18390.html http://tc.eserver.org/18390.html So you've decided it's time to interact with your users. You're tired of this one-way street — you talking, them listening. You want to actually hear what your readers have to say. In order to do this, you'll need to provide a way for people to enter information. Therefore, you're going to need an HTML form.