[Sigia-l] "clear" button on web forms

[George Schneiderman]

Where the purpose of the form is to execute a search, there *might* be something to be said for including a Clear button for the user to reset the search parameters.  It would depend upon the specifics.  My hunch is that if you had a web site where users commonly execute fairly complex searches that involve specifying a number of different parameters, and for which it was common for them to execute successive searches that were quite different from one another, that the utility of being able to clear the search parameters might outweight the risk of doing so accidentally.  Examples might be a web tool for real estate brokers to search listings, or for librarians to search library catalogs.   (Since librarians and real estate brokers are likely to be searching on behalf of third parties, it is likely that they would execute successive searches that were quite different from one another, rather than repeating variations on a theme as would be more likely for library patrons or prospective homebuyers.)

--George Schneiderman

(Mostly I agree with what everyone else has said; I'm just trying to think of the exceptional cases where a Clear button might actually serve some useful purpose.)


-----Original Message-----
From: H Taylor <taylor at critpath.org>
Sent: Jul 16, 2004 10:43 AM
To: sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: [Sigia-l] "clear" button on web forms

Has anyone seen studies/information about usability of the 
"clear"/"reset" button which seems to be so common on web forms? This 
feature is fairly ubiquitous, but I can barely imagine a purpose for 
it.  (I recognize that technically, "clear" and "reset" are different, 
but in most form fields, default values are empty, so they become 
functionally identical).

How many people go through the trouble of filling out a (potentially 
long) form, only to get to the end and realize that they've filled in 
every field incorrectly and the only solution is to push a button that 
wipes out all of their entries so they can start again fresh?

On the other hand, how many people click a button which they quickly 
assume to be "submit", only to discover that the submit button was 
actually over on the other side, and the button they've just pressed 
has wiped out everything they've spent the last 5 minutes carefully 
entering?

Is there a real use for these types of buttons, or is this just 
something that was made available in the HTML spec, and has since been 
propagated by web programmers who assume that it must be useful if it's 
part of the spec?

- Hal Taylor

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