Forms suck. Period. These forms, however, don’t suck as much.
FORMS IN THE WILD
Odeo Sign Up Form - Does it surprise me that the goodess behind this was designed by Dan at Simplebits and coded by Dunstan of 1976 design? No, not really.
del.icio.us - Hello, maaaah-velous.
Google Maps Directions - Until Google Maps, I never even realized I hated going through every field on Mapquest to find where I needed to go.
Tangent New-member Sign Up Form - I was sad to see this service go because they had some really great ideas. Anyway, I always liked the way this form showed users help tips on the site when they were filling the info out.
snook Comment Form - Just nicely done. The arrows for guiding my eyes to content and what to do next. Also, the disappearing search when you scroll down.
FORM RESOURCES
Forms in HTML Documents - Section 17 of the W3C Recommendations
Accessible HTML/XHTML Forms - from the people at the Web Standards Project
Styling Form Widgets - We use this here on Particletree.
I agree with most of your list, but I question Google maps. I hate the fact that the average user has to read directions to know the correct way of entering data. Mapquest forms may be tedius, but they are usable. Now that I am familiar with Google maps, I can appreciate it more. I guess it all depends whether or not the trade off is worth it.
Yeah, the syntax isn’t great right away, but I think they allow for a lot of different variations. It just comes to making the algorithms smarter rather than the interface more complex.
Honestly, it makes sense. From where to where, that’s how simple it should be and it gets me thinking about how decisions in interfaces should always be difficult. Every link, every element, every word should be one of the hardest things to add to a page because each item reduces the value of the other items on the page.
I get to something, I just want to get started and I’m glad Google appreciates that desire.
A very timely article. I have been having to use a lot more forms on the websites I am working on and would definitely like to make them more semantic and also more pleasing to the eyes. Thanks for the links.
Well, odeo’s design is definitely great but the two times I looked at the subscribing form (when I subscribed and after reading this post) I stayed stall in front of it trying to figure out what each field was about. OK, Maybe I’m dumb but separating field names and inputs in two columns got me a little confused. I think when I go to a two columns page, my eyes fix at the central part and ignore, at first glance, the sidebar. Is it just me or anyone felt like this when looking at this form?
Tangent’s contextual help is still the best implementation that I’ve ever seen, thanks for reminding me!
Serindipidous actually, I’ll have to go poking around in that source again..
You know, for a site that talks about usability, I have to gently chastise you for the effects you have placed on links. I am beginning to dislike the hover/popup effects greatly.
Baron, no love for the nicetitles? Do you not like how they look or are they keeping you from clicking on the links? They should behave no different from the tooltips that show up by default on browsers.
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Everyone needs a hug.