Most of the work I do right now, I can’t post here because it’s proprietary and client-facing only. However, there’s one application, Mortgage Loan App, that’s fairly new and is what we call a “consumer facing” (meaning our clients’ customers) application that I would like to use as an example to discuss usability in forms and other aspects of form design. I’ll be referring back to it quite a bit in the next couple weeks. This copy is our production environment test copy; clients can customize the application with their own logo, colors and contact information.
A few forms topics (will link each when the post is finished, so feel free to bookmark this page to make it easy to find them in the blog):
- Label Placement
- Row Highlighting
- User Flow
- Tabbed Interfaces meet the Wizard
- Back/Next Navigation
- Button Placement
- buttons vs input=button vs input=submit
- Information breakdown, what’s on which page and why
- Why I use unordered lists in fieldsets for my forms
- Progressive Enhancement and Usability:
- dynamically hiding extra fields when they aren’t needed
- Making your form usable even when js and css are turned off by the user
- Making it Pretty
- CSS file design for multiple templates/themes
- Nifty 3d buttons without resorting to graphics
- Disabled Submit Buttons in IE and Firefox
- IE and empty divs



