Keep the Important Stuff on the Left

Apr 062010
 

Jakob Nielsen released a new report to day: Horizontal Attention Leans Left. His findings indicate that web users spend 69% of their time on the left hand side of the page.

Hiding User Functions in Plain Site

Mar 092010
 

Jakob Nielsen posted a new article yesterday that had me checking all my sites immediately afterwards. His article, Closeness of Actions and Objects in GUI Design. The lesson? Stop hiding user functions in plain site.

In his article he uses an Apple product as the example on what not to do. Yes, Apple! There was a couple of other lessons I got out it as well. Continue reading »

Is Jakob Missing Something About Form Security?

Jun 242009
 

I am a subscriber to Jakob Nielsen’s site, a popular web usability expert. Today he sent out an email with his findings that suggest we should stop using password masking on forms. I usually would agree with his findings, and many of the polls I run come to similar conclusions. In this particular case though, I think his case studies don’t reflect a real world experience, and missed an important point. Continue reading »

Jakob’s Bonus

Feb 202008
 

Yesterday, Jakob Nielson released his Top-10 Application Design Mistakes. His Bonus Mistake was the first issue I noticed today while reviewing sites. The use of a reset button on web forms.

What is Reset Button For?

Too often I find the reset button on forms, and I believe it is because most new webmasters just don’t know what it is for other than resetting the form. Well they are right. It resets the form, and clears all the data entered. Why would you want to do this though? Imagine you were signing up for a new service on a website, and the form requires you to enter all your contact information. Would you hit the reset button because you made a typo when entering your address? You might accidentally if the reset button was there, but otherwise no. There is no reason for it in this case. That would be a classic example of when not to include the reset button.

So when do you use it? An good example would be if the form was for repeated use by one visitor, such as entering contact information of all their friends. Even then, if done correctly, can be avoided. By simply having a link back to the form on the completed submission page should bring the visitor back to the form with cleared data. It is much faster to click a link than hit the back button.

Is there a reset button on your site?

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