> 1) Make the Terms and conditions a mandatory step before reaching the
> form - this is also legaly the most secure. As they are annoying show
> them upfront as a must rather than sneakily in a link that might make
> the user lose her data to boot.
This solution is quite user-unfriendly. In most cases people do not want to
read the T&C as they are standard legal talk that hardly anybody understands
anyway. They have to be accessible, people have to agree to them, but we all
know that 90% of the people do not want to read it.
Yes, but at least it is honest. If you HAVE to comply with terms and
conditions, then tell the user about that and don't hide it. It works
for ANY software installation or sign up process for webmails for
example.
> 2) Embed the terms and conditions in the same document and link them
> with an anchor - that also allows you to use any CSS magic to make
> them not take up too much screenspace (overflow) - if your argument is
> that they need to be maintained separately, use SSI to pull them in
> server-side.
Pretty much the same user-unfriendlyness: you present the user with a very
long page of content that they do not understand. T&C are intimidating to
the users and people do not want to read them.
How so? The idea is to have the Terms and Conditions below the form.
If I want to read them, all I need is to click the link and you even
stay on the same page. No surprises or dangers of losing data. You
could even do a fancy lightbox effect.
> 5) Call the link next to the terms and conditions checkbox I agree
> with the _Terms and Conditions_ (shift-click to open in a new window)
> and remove the parenthesis when JS is available and you can apply a
> handler.
This assumes that users know what they want. Unfortunately that is not
always the case. Many users might not understand the importance of opening
this page in a separate window. They click on the link without pressing
Shift and then realise that they just lost all their data.
There is fallbacks for that, see next point. A counterargument for
that is that people without popup blockers are so conditioned not to
consider data in any popup worth while that they close it without
seeing it. I encountered both when conducting user testing. Have you?
> ah (6) Make the terms and conditions link a terms and conditions
> button that sends the data and stores it in the session or POST
> arguments and retains them when you choose the form view again.
Users do not know that their data was just stored in a POST argument.
They don't need to know, it just happens.
Firstly, most users will get a shock, assuming they just lost all their
data. Then they will press the Back button and be presented with the
shocking "Refresh your browser" message that most people do not understand.
They don't get a shock when there is a big heading explaining that
they can go back to the form. Sorry, bad IA and UI is not the fault of
technology, it is yours.
I am sorry, but in the long run the popup window is the best solution for
T&C. The reason for this is that users expect this behaviour when requesting
information while in the middle of a linear process. Experience with other
applications (be it Word, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, whatever) taught us that
this is how computers behave.
Did it? I learnt a lot by doing real user testing rather than relying
on my assumptions or comparing my product with something different.
The same analogy would make dropdown navigation on the top the best
web site or web application navigation. What it forgets to take into
account is that your application already resides in another
application that does follow all these rules.
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