Posts Tagged ‘web forms’
Create Multi-Language Forms
We’ve now released the first international version of FormSmarts. Form users now see instructions, error messages, and confirmation messages in their preferred language. FormSmarts is already available in 23 languages, and several more translations are under way.
The languages supported are: Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish. If your language is not listed and you are willing and able to translate FormSmarts into your language, sign up here.
Other changes worth mentioning:
- Create forms in any language. Because of the character encoding that was used, web forms could before only be designed using a West-European language. FormSmarts now supports all languages.
- Now using ISO date format. The date format accepted was changed to the ISO format YYYY-MM-DD. Note that because most users enter dates with a date-picker, the impact of this change is very small in practice. The format used on the confirmation page and in email notifications has not been changed.
- New form URL format. The default form URL format was changed to accommodate forms which title is not in English. The previous URL format that was based on form title is still supported for backward compatibility.
We welcome your feedback about this new version of FormSmarts. Please report any problems you may find.
Posted on November 30th, 2008 in form builder.
2 Comments »
Tags: international, web forms
Date Type & Datepicker
Anyone using a standard text field for dates should upgrade to the new date type.
Fields with the date type show as a text box, with a datepicker poping up when the field is selected. A datepicker allows users to input dates in an intuitive and interactive way, therefore reducing the risk of errors.
Date Format
Another reason for using a datepicker is to alleviate the date format problem. Because of date formatting differences, 12/07/2008 means December 7th in the U.S., but July 12th in Europe. Although we initially thought of adopting the ISO/W3C date format “yyyy-mm-dd”, we eventually preferred the U.S. format “mm/dd/yyyy”. That is, until we release an internationalized version of FormSmarts.
Because users don’t interact directly with the text field (unless they want to), but rather with the datepicker, they don’t have to be aware of date formatting issues.
To avoid any misunderstandings, dates are displayed as Sunday July 20, 2008.
Any questions or comments? Leave a reply. We are in particular interested in feedback from non U.S. users.
Posted on July 20th, 2008 in form handler.
2 Comments »
Tags: email notification, form handler, input field, international, web forms
Geolocalized Country Selection Field
We’re going to add over the week-end two new input field types: country, and date. You should upgrade any web forms currently using a standard text field for country or date to the new types.
When to Use the Country Type
Choose the country type whenever you want to show on a form a dropdown list with the 280 odd ISO country names.
Visitor Country Selected by Default
A country list field is typically used to ask the visitor about his/her country of residence. You’ve certainly already experienced the frustration of having to search for your country in a long list each time you fill out a form. At FormSmarts, we want to save time to everyone, so the visitor’s country is automatically selected by default.
That way, users only have to change the selection if the question asks them about a country different from their country of residence. For example, “Where did you travel last time you went abroad?”
Reducing the time needed to fill a form helps reduce form abandonment.
Any questions or comments? Leave a reply.
P.S. We’ll present the date type in another post.
Posted on July 17th, 2008 in form handler.
No Comments »
Tags: form handler, geolocalization, input field, web forms
What’s the Return URL of a Form?
When creating a new form with FormSmarts Form Builder, you’re asked to provide a return URL for that form. The return URL is where visitors will be invited to go to, after a successful form submission.
In practice, the return URL is only used when the form is accessed by URL, not when it’s embedded into your website. When visitors fill out the form directly on your site, they won’t leave the page hosting that form, and there is no need to send them anywhere else. The only thing that makes sense, is to display a “thank you” message right there.
We also use return URLs to compute the list of websites in Settings > Websites.
If you don’t have a web page, simply use “http://formsmarts.com” as the return URL.
Return URL & Form Ownership
To prevent abuse, the link to the return URL is now only displayed on the confirmation page if the form owner is verified or is a FormSmarts Pro user. Visit the Settings tab of your account to verify your sites.
Want a Customized “Thank You” Message on Your Forms?
Publishers can now personalize the “thank you” message on the confirmation page. An initial version of payment integration discussed in the comments below is also available.
Posted on July 11th, 2008 in HTML form.
20 Comments »
Tags: form builder, form owner, payment integration, return url, web forms, widget
Form Color Settings
Like many FormSmarts users, you may sometimes want to customize the style of your web forms. This may be because you want the forms to match the rest of your website, or because you want a form to stand out on a web page.
The form builder now allows you to change the text and background color of your forms. Visit the Form Details window in the Forms tab to set color preferences for a particular form.
Things to note:
- color settings only affect embedded forms, not forms access by their FormSmarts URL
- because your color settings are stored in our servers, you can change settings and see the result immediately. You don’t need to update the form code on your website.
How to Change Form Colors
- By default, form text is black, and form background is transparent. This should fit the needs of most users, and if you’re happy with this, you don’t need to do anything.
- If you do want to change a color, the easiest way is to choose one of the popular colors we’ve preselected. Just click on the color you want.
- If you prefer to use your own colors, you may type any valid 6-digit HTML color code directly. For example, 808080 is a shade of gray.
Usability Note
It’s important to preserve the accessibility of your forms to visually impaired visitors, and their usability under poor reading conditions (e.g. bright sunshine). Always keep a high color contrast.
Posted on July 6th, 2008 in form builder.
7 Comments »
Tags: embed, form builder, usability, web forms, widget
How to Lay Out Form Input Fields
Your goal as a web publisher is maximize the number of (legitimate) respondents to your forms. A first step towards this goal is to lay out your forms in a way that is intuitive to users, makes forms faster to fill in, and minimizes form validation errors.
It follows four points you should consider when designing a web form:
- choose the most appropriate input field widget for the situation
- group fields together within logical sections
- place multi-line text input fields (textarea in HTML) towards the bottom of the form
- group optional fields together at the bottom of the form
The first point is discussed in details in FormSmarts documentation.
The second point commends, for example, that when you ask people about their contact details, you group all relevant fields (first name, last name, email,…) together. We found that most form designers tend to do that right. The form builder will in the future allow users to define different logical (and visual) sections within web forms.
Multi-line text input fields obviously tend to take longer to fill in than other input fields. They require more effort, thinking and typing, so place them after other fields. Visitors will be less inclined to abandon the form altogether if they have already spent time completing the first part of the form.
The last point is about grouping optional fields together at the bottom of the form. This allows people to quickly review the remaining questions, and skip the fields they don’t want to fill in or don’t apply to them. This may of course conflict with grouping fields within logical sections. In that case, place optional fields at the end of each logical section.
We’ve now enabled comments, and we warmly welcome your thoughts and feedback about this post. if you’re reading this by email, just click on the title to post a reply.
Posted on June 29th, 2008 in HTML form.
4 Comments »
Tags: form builder, form design, howto, input field, web forms
Text & Background Colors in Embedded Forms
As already mentioned in another post, we are soon going to allow FormSmarts users to customize the look of web forms. This applies in particular to embedded forms.
At this time, the form text color is black, and the form background is transparent. This leads to an issue when the page hosting the form has a black background. If you are affected by this problem, please contact us so we change the text color of your forms to white.
We welcome your suggestions about form look/style configuration options you would find useful, besides colors and border.
Posted on June 17th, 2008 in HTML form.
No Comments »
Tags: embed, web forms, widget
