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Web Form Design

Filling in the Blanks

Web Forms

By Luke Wroblewski. Rosenfeld Media, May 2008.
Available in paperback and digital package (1-933820-24-1), digital (PDF) edition (ISBN 1-933820-25-X)

Web Form Design

Forms make or break the most crucial online interactions: checkout (commerce), registration (community), data input (participation and sharing), and any task requiring information entry. In Web Form Design, Luke Wroblewski draws on original research, his considerable experience at Yahoo! and eBay, and the perspectives of many of the field's leading designers to show you everything you need to know about designing effective and engaging Web forms.

"Luke Wroblewski has done the entire world a great favor by writing this book. Online forms are ubiquitous and ubiquitously annoying but they don't have to be. Wroblewski shows Web designers how to present forms that gather necessary information without unnecessarily badgering and annoying visitors. With deft explanations and clear examples, he presents a clear case for better Web forms and how to achieve them. This book will help you every day."
—Alan Cooper, Chairman, Cooper; author, The Inmates are Running the Asylum (more testimonials)

Web Form Design is available in full-color paperback and digital (PDF) versions. Supplemental content is available on this site, and all of the book's images can be downloaded from Flickr.

“Web Form Design” Blog

Online Event & Discount Code: Modern Web Form Design

On Thursday November 13, 2008, I'll be presenting an online session about Modern Web Form Design as part of the Future Practice User Experience Webinar series.

These 60-minute webinars are available as live classes, and then are made available in a recorded, edited format. Tickets include a copy of my new book, Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks in both DRM-free digital and four-color paperback editions.

If you’re interested in attending, feel free to use my discount code (LUKEWBNR) to receive 20% off registration.

Event Details
Thursday, November 13 (1-2pm EST)
About Future Practice Webinars
Registration Information

Official Description
The Web has been transformed by the recent proliferation of rich interactions and social applications. But the workhorses of the online world, Web forms, have been slow to evolve with these changes. As brokers of crucial online interactions like e-commerce checkout and registration, forms bridge the gap between people, their information, and your product or service. As a result, Web form design matters. But web forms aren't keeping up.

Building on topics in his top-selling book, Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks, Luke Wroblewski will walk you through the latest applications of rich Web form interactions (made possible by dynamic technologies like Ajax) including: flexible inputs, dynamic help systems, inline validation, selection dependent inputs, and more. He'll also outline how gradual engagement approaches to form design can create compelling new user experiences for a wide variety of Web applications and services. Learn how these modern approaches to Web form design can enhance your sites!

Alternative List Box UI

List boxes can act as a set of radio buttons (allowing people to select exactly one choice from a set of mutually exclusive options) or as a set of checkboxes (allowing people to select any number of choices from a list of options). List boxes can be configured to show more options than a drop-down menu while still taking up less screen real estate than a list of radio buttons or checkboxes. Despite these advantages, the dual nature of list boxes (mutually exclusive single selection or multiple selection) tends to cause problems for many people. As a result, list boxes are rarely used in Web forms.

On Functioning Form, I discuss an alternative solution for selecting multiple options within a form: Alternate Select Multiple.

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