Dan Gilleland posted on October 13, 2009 22:42
One of the benefits of teaching computer programming to post-secondary students is stumbling across all sorts of great resources on the web. I ran into two of them today.
The first article by Luke Wroblewski gives a good introduction and examination of what makes for friendly web forms. He provides nice, simple examples of effective form layouts and identifies the advantages and disadvantages they hold. He has a book, too, called Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks. If the article is any indication of what’s in the book, it would be worth looking into.
The second article by Vitaly Friedman is thought-provoking because of the whole creative aspect of designing web forms. If you are tired of the standard types of forms out there, then looking over this article could whet your appetite for something more exciting. Again, this is definitely worth the read.
It’s also worth noting that this second article is from a website called Smashing Magazine (www.SmashingMagazine.com), which I’ve found to be a great resource for inspiration and technical advice. It’s definitely on my “watch” list of sites to browse around.
So, check these out, and start making your sites sweeter. Cheers!