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CSS-Based Forms: Modern Solutions

CSS-Based Forms: Modern Solutions

Agave Group » Blog Archive » (Functional) Pretty Forms Forms have been a rough spot when it comes to style. There’s just only so much you can do; the browsers just don’t allow the kind of styling I’d like. The issue is often discussed, and a nice demonstration of the problem can be found over at Roger Johansson’s site. There have also been a few solutions attempted. Until I really started working on this, the best solution I was able to find was at badboy media. My end goal was to make my forms look like this: There were a couple of other requirements I had (that were not necessarily met in other solutions): Needs to be non-intrusive. In other words, I should be able to drop this thing on any page in just a few lines, and it should deliver great looking forms without interrupting any existing functionality. So how’d it go? >> Have a look < < It was that 3rd requirement above that proved tricky. So want to use/tinker with this? Depending on how your page is built this might muck up your layout. Also, the layout is affected by the doctype.

Prettier Accessible Forms It can be time consuming to make web forms both pretty and accessible. In particular, laying out forms where the form label and input are horizontally adjacent, as in the image below, can be a real problem. We used to use tables, which worked well in this scenario—but forms don’t constitute tabular data, so it’s a semantic faux pas Article Continues Below I’ve tried to create a form-styling solution that is both accessible and portable (in the sense that I can move the code from one project to the next). Marking up the form#section1 The most important part of a form is the HTML we use to build it. fieldset and legend#section2 The fieldset element allows us to group form controls into logical, related “chunks.” legend then allows us to add a caption to that fieldset, which helps users understand the context of the form controls contained within that fieldset. label#section3 Let’s look at a simple fieldset example (line wraps marked » -Ed Styling the form#section4 Bugs#section5 We’re done.

Niceforms :: Personal projects :: Emblematiq Web forms. Everybody knows web forms. Each day we have to fill in some information in a web form, be it a simple login to your webmail application, an online purchase, or signing up for a website. They are the basic, and pretty much the only way of gathering information on the web. You basically know a web form when you see one as they always look the same and they’ve kept this look over the years. Try as hard as you might but web forms can only change their appearance so much. Niceforms is a script that will replace the most commonly used form elements with custom designed ones. Form Elements: 40 CSS/JS Styling and Functionality Techniques - Noupe Design Blog Aug 17 2008 Designing effective web forms isn’t easy, as we need to figure out more practical styling and functionality techniques to provide a great user experience. Recently there have been a number of noteworthy techniques such as styling different form fields, live validation, Context highlighting, trading options from field to another, slider controls and more – using CSS and different Javascript libraries. Below we present findings of search to more than 40 tutorials and demos to showcase the capabilities and robustness of CSS and Javascript. You might be interested to check other CSS related posts: 1-Styling dropdown select boxes- To style a dropdown select box is heavy work. 2-<select> Something New, Part 1-With a little DOM scripting and some creative CSS, you too can make your <select>s beautiful… and you won’t have to sacrifice accessibility, usability or graceful degradation. 3-Styling even more form controls-There are a lot of controls that can be used in an HTML form. Homepage

10 Tips for Incredible Web Forms! What I’ll be showing you is how to have perfect working web forms with stunning visuals to produce the desired form for you every time! I’ll be taking you through the core principles, and making your web forms stand out from the rest! At the end of it all you can see many examples of stunning web forms across the net. Before you begin to create your web forms you need to know what coding language you’re going to use. What are my options? Different kinds of languages vary depending on the type of backend design. “So Now, Which One to Use?!” If you’re after a quick, simple, and efficient method for coding your web from then PHP is probably for you. PHP is sort of a hybrid script-based language. Example of Working PHP Web Form: Code: You can find out a lot about PHP on the website of the creators of this fantastic language. “Is PHP Really the Best Language For You?” You can’t just summarize a language as the best choice; everyone has different needs and preferences. We can’t forget the mark up!

Fancy Form Design Using CSS Article Every day this week, we’ll be publishing an article that’s been hand picked by our editor, as part of CSS Theme Week. Forms. Is there any other word that strikes as much fear into the hearts of grown web designers? I think that the reputation of forms as an untamable, ugly necessity has arisen for two reasons: Form elements are derived from native operating system widgets, which makes them particularly difficult to style.Forms are often critical to the function of a web site — they’re most often employed as search boxes, inquiry forms, or shopping cart checkouts — and need to function as smoothly as possible in order to meet user expectations. However, it’s still possible to incorporate both these points into designing a form tailored to the style of the rest of your site. Accessible Form Markup Before we can begin to look at form layout, we need to craft some really solid markup that will provide us with a framework to which we can add some style. Labeling Form Elements Form Layout

77 Inspiring Blog Comment Form Designs - Good Examples | Graphic and Web Design Blog -Resources And Tutorials I am continuing to do separated web-design roundups and research, this time we will look at good blog comment design examples. Maybe you can argue, how similar are such comment forms, but still I believe such huge roundups can help to see differences and compare many designs in one place. Usually forms are pretty classic with standard fields, submit buttons – nothing more, nothing less. But still even little change of field background, border style, font, rounded corners, small icons can make huge difference. Usually my attention grabbed those comment designs with small icons added to describe each form, transparency and extended possibilities. It is always good idea to add live comment preview, smilies or some simple CSS bold, italic, underline effects to give more options to advanced comment writers. 1. Interesting background to stand out! 2. Those hand-drawn lines, cute icons and rounded corners create really personal touch to this comment form. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Form design with css Summary: Websites have become less accessible and more complex over time according to recent studies. Learn how to buck the trend by creating fast, accessible CSS forms that work with modern browsers and gracefully degrade. In a recent study of web design patterns, Dr. Melody Ivory found that accessibility is the most underutilized aspect of good web page design (Ivory 2005). In fact websites have become more complex and less accessible over time (Hackett 2003). A survey of CSS-based forms revealed many variations on a theme (see Vandersluis 2004). Figure 1: CSS Forms Layout Example (image) Table-Based Contact Form First let's look at the old way of laying out a form. Note how much of the XHTML code is used for layout. Unfortunately, laying out a form with tables can make it difficult to access for folks with disabilities. Building a CSS-based Form This barebones contact form contains the same fields, but they are now surrounded by semantic markup, not layout. Add CSS Float, mix well

Web Form Design: Modern Solutions and Creative Ideas | Design Showcase Advertisement Web form is often the main communication channel between visitors and site owners. Feedback is always important which is why it’s necessary to make sure that web forms are easy to understand and intuitive to use. Nevertheless, even in form design one can afford some healthy portion of creativity. Web forms don’t have to be boring and, using CSS or Flash, you can easily make sure that they are appealing and effective. To get noticed, you need to come up with something unique and interesting — symbols, icons, colors, position or the size of web form are often used to achieve interesting design solutions. Below we present over 40 (really) beautiful examples of web forms as well as modern solutions and creative ideas related to web form design. Also consider our previous article CSS-Based Forms: Modern Solutions1 which lists modern solutions for CSS-based form design. 1. Swfir3 also uses an envelope as a metaphor. Handwriting in use on Katrin Wegmann’s site. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Web Form Design Patterns: Sign-Up Forms - Smashing Magazine Advertisement If you want to maximize the revenue of your service you need to maximize completion rates of your web forms. Unless you have some revolutionary ideas to impress your visitors at first glance, it is not enough to simply enable users to sign up on your site. To make it possible for the service to reach a maximal exposure we, designers, need to provide users with a good user experience. We need to invite them, describe to them how the service works, explain to them why they should fill in the form and suggests the benefits they’ll get in return. And, of course, we should also make it extremely easy for them to participate. However, designing effective web forms isn’t easy. But how exactly can we figure out these decisions? Below we present findings of our survey of current web form design patterns — the results of an analysis of 100 popular web-sites where web-forms (should) matter. Sign-Up Form Design Survey We have selected 100 large sites where web-forms (should) matter2.

Web Form Design Patterns: Sign-Up Forms, Part 2 - Smashing Magazine Advertisement Last week we have presented first findings of our web forms survey1. The main objective of the survey was to provide designers and developers with some intuition of how effective web forms are designed; we also presented some guidelines of how an effective and user-friendly web form can be achieved. We have focused on sign-up forms as we wanted to consider further crucial forms (e.g. checkout forms) separately. Afterwards we’ve gone through each and every one sign-up form of the selected sites and analyzed the design approaches implemented in these forms. Please notice that this post is not about checkout forms — that’s a topic for another discussion, we may consider them separately in one of the upcoming posts. 3. In the first part of our research we have considered the placement of the sign-up links and sign-up forms as well as on the visual appearance of forms. 3.1. 3.2. 3.3. If hints and help appear, they appear… 3.4. According to our research, 3.5. 3.6. 3.7. 3.8. 3.9.

Styling form controls with CSS, revisited Over two years ago, in September 2004, I posted an article called Styling form controls. My intention with that article (and its follow-up, Styling even more form controls) was to show that attempting to use CSS to make form controls look similar across browsers and operating systems in an exercise in futility. It simply cannot be done. Since discussions about applying CSS to form controls continuously crop up, new versions of browsers and operating systems, and entirely new browsers have been released since September 2004, it was time for an update. In addition to that, my original articles did not include all types of form controls. Because of all this I spent way too much time creating a total of 224 screenshots showing the effects of various CSS rules applied to form controls. I have created a demo page for each type of form control: As you may already have noted, there are no screenshots from Windows Vista. So what does this experiment show?

37 Creative Login Form Designs Login forms are often an integral part of the website design. In addition to being simple and functional, it also helps to have a colorful and creative login form design that can add to the beauty of your interface and attract more visitors. Here are some of the most creative login form designs that can be found online. While some stand out for their sparking colors, others tend to be extra ordinarily creative in their context: 25 Stylish Examples of Web Forms A web form is the primary mode of permitting users to interact with a website. Whether it’s for signing up to a service, leaving a comment on a blog post, or writing an email through a web-based client such as Gmail – forms are a staple to modern websites and web applications. In this showcase, you’ll be able to set your eyes on a few remarkable and well-constructed web form designs for inspirational ideas on how to build and design engaging and effective HTML forms. 1. Alexandru Cohaniuc 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. nclud 10. 11. 12. 13. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 25. Related content

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