Posted by Benjamin Niemann on 10/30/06 10:47

Hello,

Silkster wrote:

> I have quiet a few forms to create soon and Iam not totaly up on
> them...
> What I would link to to do is instead of having the <lable> then the
> <input>
> is just have the form field with the instructions in side eg:
> [__Enter Your First Name Here_____]
> and when the user click in the filed the text disapears.
>
> I know this can be done with javascript and the ecomerce site I am
> doing needs to have javascript switched on
>
> But what do I do with the lable field?
> and what impact does the senarion have on accessability?

I don't think, this is a good idea - even if you can rely on the presence of
JS in the user-agent.

Can you rely on the inputs always being wide enough to show the complete
instructions? If the instructions are clipped, there's no way for the user
to see the hidden part, because once she clicks on it to scroll to the
right it will disappear.

And a problem that people like me with a very 'selective' short-term memory
will have: click on the input and immediately forget what was written
there, e.g. for dates: "was is YYYY-MM-DD or MM-DD-YY or ... ?"

If your layout is so tightly packed that you think there's no space left for
labels beside the form controls, than the real problem is your layout.


HTH

--
Benjamin Niemann
Email: pink at odahoda dot de
WWW: http://pink.odahoda.de/

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