At An Event Apart Boston, CSS guru Eric Meyers mentioned an incredibly sensible technique for giving users a simple means of telling which fields in a form they still need to fill out: use
attribute selectors in your CSS to highlight form fields which still have a default or empty value after the user submits the form.
Continue reading "Using CSS Selectors to Highlight Unedited Form Fields" »
There's an art, in my opinion, to validating the information that a user submits in a web form. There are many ways to do it, but few forms do so in a way that is clear for the user and gives them fast feedback, before they submit.
The first thing you should do is use form field labels, descriptive text, and colors to give the user instructions and feedback before they even enter any information. The second is to give them instant feedback via JavaScript when they click on the form's submit button-- before they upload any data. Finally, if the user's entries pass your JavaScript validation and are sent up to the server, you should perform full validation there and, if needed, send their form back to them with clear instructions on how to correct any errors they made. I'll explain each of these steps in detail.
Continue reading "Best Practices for Validating Form Submissions" »
