Comments on: Responsible Design – Form Styling

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 01 May 2005 03:52:50 +0000

There have been no other side affects that I am aware of.

By: fambizzari

fambizzari — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 00:55:53 +0000

What other issues are there similar to the Firefox select issue? Let us benefit further from your in-depth experience.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 22:33:58 +0000

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to test it with JAWS/HPR etc…
The label still starts before the input and is still assocciated with the input via the for attribute, so *hopefully* it functions the same. Funny you should bring that up though — if it was for a client that sort of thing would never go untested; yet when building one’s own site it is easy to let that sort of thing slip by.
** Nit picking is a Good Thing™

By: Phil

Phil — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 14:10:50 +0000

Nit-picky I know, but in reading sites like yours I try and learn new methods of combining usability with the power of CSS presentation by looking at what the author actually uses, so I often study “under the hood” so to speak.

I also noticed you use the tag in an unusual way. I’ve never seen it used to surround the input element it is related to rather than placed before (for text, textarea and select inputs) or after (for checkbox or radio inputs). Any idea how this reacts in alternative devices where the label field is actually needed?

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 22 Oct 2004 23:12:26 +0000

You got me Phil! Well spotted For the record, when this article was written the form elements were split by s; when I recently re-coded my templates I have obviously forgotten something rather important… Thanks for the heads up.

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 18:55:44 +0000

Andrew: I just discovered your blog and like a lot of what I’ve see so far, including your honest opinion on why you do/don’t use certain practices.

One thing I bring to your attention however is the following:

“Don’t do it for the design. Do it for the people.
…as such I consider ease of use and reliable functionality paramount when dealing with forms.”

The problem I see is that you are using CSS to override the inline nature of the element in your comment form to get the design you desire, which in itself is not a bad thing. However, if YOUR CSS is not applied to the document, the form fields smash together in a jumble that is definitely not as easy to read/use.

Considering how well the rest of your site functions without your CSS applied, I think you could heed a bit of your own mantra here to add a little semantic XHTML spacing to these elements to make things as truely easy to use as possible for all viewers without necessarily altering your design decisions.

I must say again though, for the most part I thoroughly enjoy what I’ve seen and read thus far.