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brycestevenwilley's review against another edition
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
3.0
The first half is okay, but the second half (excluding the user testing section, which is pretty short) is outdated, relevant to 2007, when much of the modern web didn't exist.
epochellipse's review against another edition
3.0
I appreciate historically where this book sits, but unfortunately I can’t fully recommend it as a current read since it’s fairly outdated, and it shows in some of the suggestions and best practices. For context on age, this was written in the days of Windows Vista and macOS Aqua. That being said, I think the ideas and principles behind the book are solid, especially the focus on user testing and treating the form as a conversation where you need to build trust, and where timing is important.
What I loved:
I especially love the attention Jarrett brings to accessibility of forms. At one point she calls out that for people using screen magnifiers, information is often pushed off the screen. I work in software accessibility and usability and this is a really common issue that I see, and causes a lot of issues for people in other contexts, like having the browser itself zoomed in, or using an ultra wide screen (or too small a screen, like Chromebook, such that it initiates horizontal scrolling). Sidebar overlays often pop up entirely outside the user’s focus or visual field.
I also loved the part about handling stakeholder interactions with information asked on forms - especially around the purposes of the information and the privacy of the information once provided. And she offered practical solutions: “Record your decisions and make sure you have offered formal and informal opportunities to stakeholders to get involved.” This has been something I had to deal with in the past, and its really valuable having actionable steps to rein in stakeholders from requesting a bunch of information for really vague reasons.
My main criticisms:
Changes in technologies and standards, like autofill technology or touch based interaction with forms, aren’t touched on. A lot of the resources mentioned are also deprecated - you can find them using Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine if you search back to ~2008, but it’s a fair bit of hassle, and once I got it the information was…. not really relevant anymore. It really takes a toll on the usefulness of some of the advice being offered, like the suggestion of waiting til the end of the page to provide any validation. For long or arduous forms, this violates that conversation format that she advocates, and we have a lot more gently helpful validation and smart-formatting options nowadays that can be used more effectively. Also she mentions not being able to find tabbed form examples. There are a LOT of forms that use tabs to segment forms nowadays, but they tend to be very specialized, like setting up cloud databases or other software infrastructure.
Another piece is the information on fonts, mostly since I also find typography fascinating. It was really interesting hearing the historical background of when legibility research was done and the contexts at the time driving a lot of their findings rather than some universally readable font, and the details for on-screen readability of Verdana. But. The mention of using fonts at a large enough point size for its details to work doesn’t make sense with the W3C recommendations since 2001 to use SVG font files, which shouldn’t have an issue with scaling to the proper font size for detail visibility (not to mention phone screens nowadays have a higher ppi than printers).
Overall:
All in all, I appreciate the book and think it was well done, but I’d take some of the best practices with a grain of salt, particularly regarding form validation.
What I loved:
I especially love the attention Jarrett brings to accessibility of forms. At one point she calls out that for people using screen magnifiers, information is often pushed off the screen. I work in software accessibility and usability and this is a really common issue that I see, and causes a lot of issues for people in other contexts, like having the browser itself zoomed in, or using an ultra wide screen (or too small a screen, like Chromebook, such that it initiates horizontal scrolling). Sidebar overlays often pop up entirely outside the user’s focus or visual field.
I also loved the part about handling stakeholder interactions with information asked on forms - especially around the purposes of the information and the privacy of the information once provided. And she offered practical solutions: “Record your decisions and make sure you have offered formal and informal opportunities to stakeholders to get involved.” This has been something I had to deal with in the past, and its really valuable having actionable steps to rein in stakeholders from requesting a bunch of information for really vague reasons.
My main criticisms:
Changes in technologies and standards, like autofill technology or touch based interaction with forms, aren’t touched on. A lot of the resources mentioned are also deprecated - you can find them using Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine if you search back to ~2008, but it’s a fair bit of hassle, and once I got it the information was…. not really relevant anymore. It really takes a toll on the usefulness of some of the advice being offered, like the suggestion of waiting til the end of the page to provide any validation. For long or arduous forms, this violates that conversation format that she advocates, and we have a lot more gently helpful validation and smart-formatting options nowadays that can be used more effectively. Also she mentions not being able to find tabbed form examples. There are a LOT of forms that use tabs to segment forms nowadays, but they tend to be very specialized, like setting up cloud databases or other software infrastructure.
Another piece is the information on fonts, mostly since I also find typography fascinating. It was really interesting hearing the historical background of when legibility research was done and the contexts at the time driving a lot of their findings rather than some universally readable font, and the details for on-screen readability of Verdana. But. The mention of using fonts at a large enough point size for its details to work doesn’t make sense with the W3C recommendations since 2001 to use SVG font files, which shouldn’t have an issue with scaling to the proper font size for detail visibility (not to mention phone screens nowadays have a higher ppi than printers).
Overall:
All in all, I appreciate the book and think it was well done, but I’d take some of the best practices with a grain of salt, particularly regarding form validation.
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