rocknbil - 4:46 pm on May 1, 2012 (gmt 0)

On your #1, there's a little bit of reasoning behind it. People don't read. Seriously. They get extremely annoyed if they have to stop and actually READ what's in front of them, it's all about click-click-click. The developer and/or site owner are trying to keep it as simple as possible in the hope that their end users might take half a second to actually digest it. :-) While we techhies think on your levels, most people don't. Most of the passwords will wind up being in the form mykidsname123. :-\

#2 EXACTLY. Only marketers and designers think this kind of crap is important. If you want a number format wherever it submits, DO THE WORK and program it to do what you need, don't make the end user jump through hoops. Even the sample you provide is blown out of the water by . . . . international numbers. :-\ The same is true of zip codes, postal codes, provinces and states ("Oh we're not marketing to them, so we don't give a crap. Just do what I said because it is genius and you don't recognize it.")

#2 and #3: if you want specific formats, make the fields in the formats you want. Three boxes, style them pretty, and OMG make sure it has those round cornered drop shadows because stock forms are just TOO contrasty and legible. We can't have that. :-\

#4a: Overuse of jQuery libraries and ordinary Javascript to show and hide s**t with no graceful degradation when it's disabled. "Oh if they don't have Javascript we don't care about them anyway. Who disables Javascript? Screw them, I am GENIUS so let's do it this way." Okay if you want an answer - how about some AVG software disables JS without the end user really even knowing it? I guess their money isn't as good as everyone else's within your view.

#4b: Using everything you believe about 4a as an excuse to not duplicate the validations EXACTLY server side. "We're doing all that with Javascript." SNAP!

#5: Tab order. Go ahead and screw with the order of the source code for your Ultimate Web Vision Forms but make sure the tabs still work in a logical manner.

#6: Labels have a purpose. Use them.

#7: Links or input type="button" for submit buttons. Are you kidding me?

#8: multi step forms when they are not needed.

#9: No submit buttons at all. Email opt in's are the worst offender.

#10: "Make it so the radio buttons load without something selected." Ugh . . . . I won't even rant on this one or why it's just WRONG, or how much more work it makes for me if they aren't used as intended.

#11: And my absolute number one "you should be stripped of all computer access for life" offense . . . .

"You have an error in your form. Go back and fill out all required fields."

It boggles my mind that there are forms being coded, right now, probably thousands of them, with this approach. There's no excuse for it, and it's just plain LAZY. This is why I say "PHP is just too easy to learn." Sure, people did this back in the day with Perl and ASP, but it seems like the web is bursting at the seams with all kinds of lazy copy/paste just-get-it-working form handling and it's building a web that is insecure and decreasingly unusable.

When it comes to forms I can probably list hundreds . . . but don't want to derail your thread. As you were. :-)