On 7/18/06, Dean Matthews <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
As for those concerned about the single page issue, I see that as a printed page paradigm. I see little cost/benefit to "turning pages" and all the additional work (and expense) of carrying post arguments backwards and forwards throughout all the case-switch cgi, vs. scrolling up or down ...for the purpose of *this* form. If the purpose of the form was merchandising, I would agree with the added cost of the step by step "keep their short attention span occupied - don't lose the sale" multi page approach. But that's not a printed page paradigm, it's a "talk in short simple sentences" paradigm.
Hi Dean, There's a difference between multi-page forms on paper and on the Web, and that is that I've never had a paper form lose my data. We've all had the experience of filling out a Web form and having the data get lost for some reason. For instance, suppose I fill out a support ticket at my ISP and it takes me 30 minutes to type up a description of the problem, when I click submit I get the message, "Your session has expired. Please log in again" and my lengthy problem description is lost. This has happened enough times to me (at my ISP and plenty of other places) that now, when presented with a lengthy form online, I type the bulk of my text into a text editor, paste it into the form and then hit submit so that my effort isn't lost if the form submission goes awry. This is a case where the badly-designed sites I've run across have affected my perception of *all* sites that use forms. Regardless of how well you've coded *your* form/site, I still approach it with the expectation that there's a decent chance that the data I enter will be lost. Your form (which is deliberately demanding, as you pointed out) represents a very significant data entry effort which means it is a lot to lose. Dividing the form into chunks would give users reassurance when they hit "Next" of "so far, so good" and that the server still remembers them and is willing to save their data. That's just my $.02 but it is guaranteed to be worth no less. ;) Cheers -- Philip http://NikitaTheSpider.com/ Whole-site HTML validation, link checking and more ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
