[Sigia-l] Multi column forms in web based applications

Dave dheller at gmail.com
Thu Feb 17 06:45:10 EST 2005


Hi Chris,

There are a lot of factors that could play into why to go one way or another:

1. Are the current forms analagous to physical forms? If yes, what do
those forms look like?

2. Is a single form linear in how the data is filled out the first
time? How the data is updated? You could have the form look different
depending on if it is in creation mode (which is usually a lot more
linear) than in update mode where it might be more important to see
more on the screen. Of course some might say that the forms should
look the same for consistencey (I'm just putting out a forinstance).

3. Instead of a long form, can you break it down so that a user feels
like data is being "saved" a long the way? Progressively displaying
the form could be good? In this regards are all fields required? Do
you know what are the required fields and can you ONLY show those and
then display other fields as they are needed based on previous data
entry?

4. Is this a form that needs to be easily tabbed through? If so then
multi-column is hard to do not b/c you can't create the tab sequence
but because the user will not know where the tab is going to.

I think others might have some ideas too.

-- dave



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