Return to form

A List Apart recently published an article about form construction that, in bringing together the semantics, aesthetics and accessibility of html forms, created just the right conditions for some very interesting reader comments. Obviously it's not possible to hear what the silent majority have to say, but those who did comment on the article were much less certain about how to construct html forms than might be expected.

Particularly interesting was the the divide between those for whom a list (whether ordered, unordered or definition) was the natural choice for structuring a form, and those who thought that it was inappropriate. The latter were in two groups: the first were the table enthusiasts (who see a grid with questions down one column and answers down the other as a table) and the second were those (possibly only one in number) who thought that a list had a much more narrowly-defined applicability and to use a list for structuring forms and navigation was to misappropriate it.

Forms are the fundamental method by which we interact online; strange to think that so much interaction can be done without a consenus about how the things we use to do the interacting should be made.