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Re: proper use of labels

for

From: Christian Heilmann
Date: Jun 16, 2005 2:45AM

> Take a look at my example below using a title and label together.
> Clearly the title would make a lousy label -- and arguably makes a
> lousy title ;-) -- but it carries a lot of information and hopefully
> demonstrates how both can be used to improve usability. Don't forget
> most browsers render titles as tool tips.
>
> <label for="date">todays date (dd-mm-yy): <input type="text"
> name="date" id="date" title="enter todays date as two numbers each for
> day, month and year, separated by a dash." /></label>

Yes, that is true. However, in screen readers you need to specifically
tell the reader to read out title attributes and on browsers there is
a slight delay in the display.
Being a laptop / trackpointer user, I largely use the keyboard to tab
through forms, and will never get the title information. There are a
lot of "power-users" like that looking at the keyboard, or looking up
texts on papers / other windows and not really pay attention to the
behaviour of the form.
A classic case are text fields cut up into several fields (american
forms love that with phone numbers) and immediate validation via
JavaScript / alerts. Many a time I typed in my phone number starting
with the +44 and finding out after the whole number that that is not a
valid code for the US in the first field.
Forms require thought, my stance is to keep them as simple as possible
and tell users what things are rather than hiding this information in
tooltips or other "dynamic contextual help".


--
Chris Heilmann
Blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com
Writing: http://icant.co.uk/
Binaries: http://www.onlinetools.org/