From: "Janna Hicks DeVylder" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <on using client side validations>
: Look at Mint.com <http://mint.com/>'s : sign up process as an example. : Not only do they deal with blank fields, : they deal with inconsistencies as well. I've watched users working with forms like this. My concern is that they pretty much all (no matter how web-savvy) seem to jerk away from the screen in surprise as the ordinarily docile page suddenly starts changing on them before they've even typed anything much in the field. This worries me. For years, I've been advocating doing validations as soon as you can, but there seems to be something 'too soon' about interrupting the user's typing process to warn them about an error. It seems particularly bad on Mint.com - can't type a whole email address before it starts barking at me. So my current advice is to refrain from interrupting the conversation in this way. Let the user complete their entry as they naturally would, and only seize back control of the page when they've returned control to you. For example, by clicking on something else. Right now, I'm not 100% sure about validations on the previous field as you leave the next field. Users focus remarkably narrowly on the left-hand portion of the field to type into, and I suspect (but do not have evidence yet to prove) that they may very well fail to spot the validation on the previous field. But I think that may not matter, so long as the page-level validation gracefully handles the situation where users have failed to correct as they go. Best, Caroline Jarrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] 01525 370379 Effortmark Ltd Usability - Forms - Content ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
