Styling Form Widgets

Cameron Adams on why styling form widgets is often a bad idea.

Comments

1. May 6, 2004 by James at Practical CSS: I'm not pointing fingers here, but even though forms aren't usually the best looking part of a Web site sometimes you've got to resist the urge to style them, for usability's sake.<<

Isn't this basically the same argument that was once used for why all hyperlinks should be blue/red/purple and underlined?
2. May 6, 2004 by James at Practical CSS: Hmm...my comment was cut off..."Isn't this basically the same argument that was once used for why all hyperlinks should be blue/red/purple and underlined?"
3. May 6, 2004 by Roger: I think you should be careful when you style form elements, especially buttons and drop-down menus. You can use subtle styling, but don't overdo it. When I use forms on the web, I just get irritated when I have to think about whether a button really is a button.

Sorry, comments are closed for this post.

Roger Johansson is a Swedish web professional specialising in web standards, accessibility, and usability. More about me and this site.

Use the promo code 456BEREASTREET3 to save USD 20 when you sign up!

Validation statistics from Nikita the Spider Comments off: An analysis of the sites crawled by the bulk validation tool Nikita the Spider during March 2008.
Authentic Jobs API and Affiliates program Comments off: The Authentic Jobs job listing service now has a public API and an affiliate program.
What does Acid3 mean to you and me? Comments off: Opera and Apple have announced that their web browsers pass the Acid3 Browser Test, but how will that help web designers and developers?
Designing Web Navigation (Book review) Comments off: Learn the fundamentals of navigation design and design better navigation systems for large and small sites as well as for web based applications.
DOMAssistant bundle for TextMate Comments off: To save keystrokes and speed up development I have created a DOMAssistant bundle for TextMate.
First impressions of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 Comments off: My impressions after trying out Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for a couple of days.