John On Web Stuff » Information http://blog.geekyjohn.com My take on web things. Sometimes witty. Sharing of stuff. Thu, 25 Nov 2010 10:40:10 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v= Form Usability and UX goodness http://blog.geekyjohn.com/2010/04/form-usability-and-ux-goodness/ http://blog.geekyjohn.com/2010/04/form-usability-and-ux-goodness/#comments Tue, 06 Apr 2010 11:26:46 +0000 John http://blog.geekyjohn.com/?p=228 When we’re designing forms there are some simple things to keep in mind with regards to the UX and usability side of things that will make them that much better for our audiences.

Good Usability has two very useful articles about validation and preventing issues on web forms, well worth a read.

Alistapart has an article regarding inline validation that shows us the wonderfulness of using real-time inline validation vs. validating by submission. By giving people an indication that their input is correct (or not) while they are filling in a form results in a far greater success rate and of course there is a much better experience for users.

I also came across an excellent article at UX Matters about not putting hints inside text boxes. In a nutshell: when a text field has content — whether example content or actual content — users will often perceive that field to be filled in and skip over it.

Some other excellent websites to read where UX/Usability is concerned:

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]]> http://blog.geekyjohn.com/2010/04/form-usability-and-ux-goodness/feed/ 16 We want all of the data all of the time http://blog.geekyjohn.com/2010/03/we-want-all-of-the-data-all-of-the-time/ http://blog.geekyjohn.com/2010/03/we-want-all-of-the-data-all-of-the-time/#comments Tue, 30 Mar 2010 12:17:11 +0000 John http://blog.geekyjohn.com/?p=224 Sometimes we need to display a ridiculous amount of information be on the screen, whether that is product information, statistics, or other tabular type data. This often presents several problems:

There isn’t enough room to display this data

  • There is enough room, but it’s all crammed in to a small space (Who needs white space, right?)
  • There is too much on the screen for the user to absorb
  • Etc.

We’ve all seen Accordions and the like that help display lists with lots of information nicely. What about if we could take that to the next level and use it in a grid, not just a horizontal or vertical execution.

Grid Accordion does just that :-)

http://css-tricks.com/examples/InfoGrid/

Just thought I would throw a solution to a reasonably common problem out there.

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