Web Form Design - Filling in the Blanks review

Oct 26, 2008 by Steveproduct

Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks

4 out of 5 stars

Luke Wroblewski's Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks is an excellent book for anyone that wants to make more usable forms or even increase the number of completions for the forms on your site, whether they be for sign ups or sales.

Luke looks at what should and should not be included on a form, placement of labels, error messages, and much more. Some of what he mentioned in the book I have heard before, but there was also a lot of new stuff that I had not heard of before.

I was a bit disappointed on his weak discussion of what input field types to use based on the possible answers. Instead, he points people in the direction of a six year old book that you will probably be hard pressed to find in a book store. At the very least I would have liked to see references to Web sites that discuss this topic, as I have seen at least one address this.

While it would have been beyond the scope of the book, I would have like to seen site references for the various inline errors and confirmations that he mentions in the book. Not just how to implement these, but how to implement these so they are Section 508 compliant.

This is definitely a must read book if you are creating forms for a Web site.