Usability: Interesting Form Help
I'm reading a report from user testing of an application and there's a link to a form that the author feels has very good contextual help on the form. It's a registration form for the BBC Collective, an interactive culture magazine.
The neat thing is that as you click in each field help for the field shows up to the right of it. As The BBC uses JavaScript for this. If you have JavaScript turned off, the help texts are always on the page, so you don't miss out.
As always with JavaScript solutions the losers are people who have JavaScript turned off (usually because they cannot turn it off, Jaws for instance works best with version 6 of Internet Explorer) but who rely on assistive technology that needs to be told when a page is updated. The audio help links are part of the JavaScript onClick event, so they don't help these users.
However the page offers links, e.g. "What is a password" that show promise. But the content in those is not exactly the same as in the help texts on the page. It's much more verbose and doesn't necessarily contain all the facts the user needs. It looks as if it was meant as a complement to the in-page contextual help. It is also shown in pop-ups, which users with screen readers and screen magnifiers often find confusing. At least the BBC is warning the user about this so she can make an informed decision.
I like the way the labels have been worded with the most important words bigger and bolder. On the other hand, doing View source will give you nighmares. Layout tables, font tags and other horrors lurk under the hood.
The neat thing is that as you click in each field help for the field shows up to the right of it. As The BBC uses JavaScript for this. If you have JavaScript turned off, the help texts are always on the page, so you don't miss out.
As always with JavaScript solutions the losers are people who have JavaScript turned off (usually because they cannot turn it off, Jaws for instance works best with version 6 of Internet Explorer) but who rely on assistive technology that needs to be told when a page is updated. The audio help links are part of the JavaScript onClick event, so they don't help these users.
However the page offers links, e.g. "What is a password" that show promise. But the content in those is not exactly the same as in the help texts on the page. It's much more verbose and doesn't necessarily contain all the facts the user needs. It looks as if it was meant as a complement to the in-page contextual help. It is also shown in pop-ups, which users with screen readers and screen magnifiers often find confusing. At least the BBC is warning the user about this so she can make an informed decision.
I like the way the labels have been worded with the most important words bigger and bolder. On the other hand, doing View source will give you nighmares. Layout tables, font tags and other horrors lurk under the hood.