Comments on: Why Users Fill Out Forms Faster with Top Aligned Labels

By: Vince Delmonte

Vince Delmonte — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 17:00:45 +0000

Excellent analysis–I had never seen labels broken down into number of visual fixations before. Great stuff!

By: Er1c

Er1c — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 22:38:17 +0000

I find it very funny that the comment area does not use the format you provide.

As a developer since 1995 specializing in mobile and international sites I can tell you that vertically aligned forms work on all mobile phones, and they are the only one that always work on all mobile phones.

Translation is also reverent since sometimes translation greatly increases or decreases that amount of space a phrase takes up horizontally.

I recently had to translate a website into Simplified Chinese and it had a bunch of radio buttons in table columns … it was a nightmare and required complete reformatting.

By: Sommier à lattes

Sommier à lattes — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 23:29:29 +0000

I already new to put my forms into a single column, but I never considered the labels. Very useful …

By: CMS Buffet

CMS Buffet — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:40:42 +0000

Looks convincing. We switched one of our forms. Let’s wait and see…

By: karl

karl — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:23:59 +0000

I never thought of it this way. Very profound. I’ll be thinking of this every time I create a form. Thanks for sharing!

By: portique bois

portique bois — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 21:42:24 +0000

Top-aligned labels are the way to go especially if you want to translate the website into other languages. The same text in another language might be shorter or longer and some languages are right-to-left instead of left-to-right. Top-aligned solves both problems. Plus, it becomes possible to add descriptions below each text box in case the user really needs to know what they are filling in.

By: youngmin

youngmin — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 05:43:18 +0000

Thanks for your link. it’s very helpful.

By: Sean

Sean — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 23:51:46 +0000

I agree that evidence should be provided, but I disagree with your counter-argument.

You don’t read letter by letter, or even word by word, you read in small groupings depending on length. e.g. reading these sentences you probable fixate 4-5 times per line. Form labels are usually short enough to read with a fixed eye, there should be no left-to-right tracking to read, and therefore your eye is not bouncing left-to-right and back again to the field. The label and field can easily be seen and read as a single object. Try it yourself with the examples above. You eye should fix on the label centrally and not need to move to recognize where the input field is.