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Thread: Forms marked with list elements
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From: Jorge Fernandes
Date: Wed, Nov 08 2006 8:00AM
Subject: Forms marked with list elements
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Hi,
Recently I found an article that explain the advantages of marked
forms with list elements. "semantically..." say the author "... a
form controls in some kind of logical order, is a list".
The author outlined stylistic and accessible (??) advantages of using
list elements in a form.
About the accessible issue, I'm not so sure, that could be a good
strategy. What do you think about it?
The article is at:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/prettyaccessibleforms
Kind Regards, Jorge F.
From: Sandra Clark
Date: Wed, Nov 08 2006 8:50AM
Subject: Re: Forms marked with list elements
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Why add unneeded complexity? There has been css available for along time to
float labels and inputs without adding structure, (beyond a br tag).
<label for="idname">Label goes here</label>
<input id="idname" /><br />
input,
label,
select,
textarea{
float: left;
margin-bottom: .5em;
width: 20em;
}
label{
text-align: right;
width: 10em;
padding-top: .2em;
padding-right: 1.5em;
margin-bottom: 1em;
}
br{
clear: left;
}
Sandra Clark
=============================http://www.shayna.com
Training in Cascading Style Sheets and Accessibility
From: Jorge Fernandes
Date: Wed, Nov 08 2006 5:40PM
Subject: Re: Forms marked with list elements
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Thank you very much Sandra,
I completely agree with you. I only need an argue (different than
myself) to a client that the webmaster read the Alist apart and want
to do it like that. I argue that it is wrong. Wrong like use tables
to structure the form.
Really appreciate. Regards, Jorge
++in
From: Tim Beadle
Date: Fri, Nov 10 2006 6:20AM
Subject: Re: Forms marked with list elements
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On 08/11/06, Jorge Fernandes < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Recently I found an article that explain the advantages of marked
> forms with list elements. "semantically..." say the author "... a
> form controls in some kind of logical order, is a list".
>
> The author outlined stylistic and accessible (??) advantages of using
> list elements in a form.
>
> About the accessible issue, I'm not so sure, that could be a good
> strategy. What do you think about it?
>
> The article is at:
> http://www.alistapart.com/articles/prettyaccessibleforms
I quote:
"It can be time consuming to make web forms both pretty and
accessible. In particular, laying out forms where the form label and
input are horizontally adjacent, as in the image below, can be a real
problem. We used to use tables, which worked well in this scenariobut
forms don't constitute tabular data, so it's a semantic faux pas."
I use <div><label><input></div> pairs inside fieldsets for form
structure these days, with some CSS to style these in a compact (label
and input side-by-side) or list (label above input) depending on the
class applied to the containing fieldset. I also have special cases
for checkboxes and radio buttons, as these should come before the
associated label for meaningful screen-reader output.
That said, I know there is an argument that tabular data is _exactly_
what forms are, and so tables might be more semantically appropriate
than the ordered list that the author of the article advocates.
No right or wrong answer, but some food for thought.
Tim