Topic on Talk:Style guide/Forms

Error conditions in forms

4
NeilK (talkcontribs)

I like what you're doing (and we already have some of this in UploadWizard). I would only disagree with the "horizontal" style here as I think it is hard to make that work universally, especially in languages that are more verbose. I think vertical should be mandated.

Another question there is whether a large number of errors can "push down" the rest of the form. While in theory one could just "double space" the inputs out, and hope that it all worked, it seems inevitable that an error condition will push the rest of the form down, sooner or later.

Jorm (WMF) (talkcontribs)

I am not a person who believes that vertical positioning of form elements must be maintained. I think it's okay for elements to shift on the page as long as the user understands the context as to why (and adding errors to a field is a pretty decent context).

I'm totally fine with mandating vertical; the horizontal layout was a effect of doing live validation and to offset complaints about wasted space in layouts.

Happy-melon (talkcontribs)

I'm not sure I agree; I think the horizontal style is perfectly reasonable. What needs to happen is that if the error block gets too long, or the window gets too narrow, it automagically switches to the vertical style; that should be achievable with CSS.

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