General Form Design Best Practices

The article is meant to be a guide for IBM Form Developers for how to go about developing an IBM Form.

A FormPart that you can add to any form that shows a list of the items that currently fail validation. The table also contains a button that when pressed, will navigate the user to the item in error.

This article is meant as a sequel to a previous article on basic XForms Tables. You can read the first article http:www10.lotus.comlddlfwiki.nsfdx04292009040220PMRNOV22.htmhere. The first article outlines how to build a very simple Lotus Forms XForms table with two fields. We will pick ...

This best practice demonstrates using XForms binding techniques for copying values from one set of elements to another.

This best practice demonstrates the best way to create a set of mutually exclusive checkboxes in an XForms table. This practice can also be used outside of an XForms table.

There are several miscellaneous form design issues that you should be aware of when creating forms for Webform Server. If you draw a line that overlaps a combobox or popup, the Viewer will show the line on top. However, Webform Server will show the combobox or popup on top, which will cause a ...

You should not use rich text formatted fields in Webform Server forms as most browsers cannot properly display the resulting rich text. Typically, any rich text formatting used to modify the field’s text is stripped out, leaving only plain text. As a result, we recommend modifying text using XFDL ...

Design all Webform Server forms that are intended for print to fit the same page size. If you do not, the image of the form will be scaled to fit the page size, which may result in loss of detail. Unlike the Viewer, Webform Server does not print directly from the form on the screen. Instead, ...

Although Webform Server can check user input for formatting errors when the user exits a field, Webform Server forms cannot predictively check user input for formatting errors as the user enters information within a field. If your database requires users to enter information in a particular format ...

When creating a form for use in Webform Server, you cannot limit the amount of text the user can enter by setting the size of the field. In some cases, form designers may rely on the size of a field to limit the amount of text the user can enter. For example, a multiline field with a scrollhoriz ...

The validoverlap feature adjusts the tolerance of the overlap test between signed and unsigned items performed by the Viewer when signing items. The overlap test looks for signed items that overlap unsigned items. You should always follow the best practice of signing as much of the form as ...

Testing your forms ensures that the user experience is easy and intuitive. Tab order should proceed as expected by your users (lefttoright, righttoleft, or topdown depending on the locale), computes should function properly (taking users to correct pages, making items visible or available as ...

Some fonts do not scale well when zooming the form, which may cause text to appear cut off in some fields. This problem is most noticeable in fields that are either very small or very large. It is important to have fonts scale properly so forms are accessible to users who may have vision ...

When running Webform Server or Viewer in a portal environment, you may want to prevent users from saving and opening forms by disabling the buttons in the toolbar. In general, the philosophy of a portal is to provide a central location to work on forms. Allowing the user to save or load forms from ...

Do not use Progressive JPEG images in your forms. Both Webform Server and the Viewer support Standard JPEG image formats but do not support Progressive JPEG image formats. If your image is a Progressive JPEG, you will need to open it in a graphics program and save it as a Standard JPEG. Example No ...

You should localize your forms to suit the locale (country and language) in which they will be used. Every locale uses different symbols to express common concepts, such as currencies, decimal and grouping separators, and mathematical symbols. Furthermore, most locales express dates and times in ...

If your users are going to perform submissions using SSL under Internet Explorer 5.0 or 5.5, implement an HTML page that requires SSL authentication, and that users must view before opening a form. Under Internet Explorer 5.0 and 5.5, the submission of a form using SSL will fail if the browser ...

Do not require users to enter a large amount of text within a single field. Text fields can support up to 500K of text. If the user tries to insert more than 500K of text (about 7,500 lines in a 60character wide field), the text will be truncated at the 500K mark. If you expect users to enter ...

Some text editors will automatically add a byteorder mark (BOM) to documents. If you use a text editor to edit a form, configure your editor so it does not add a BOM to UTF8 encoded documents. (See your text editor’s documentation for details.) If your UTF8 encoded forms do contain a BOM, the ...

Do not use Smartfill data fragments to store sensitive data, such as banking information, credit card information, or personal ID numbers. Smartfill is a feature that automatically fills out portions of a form. This is accomplished by storing commonly used information, such as the user’s name and ...

Using four digit dates allows you to avoid the difficulties associated with using only two digits to represent a year. Should software or hardware handle dates by storing the year in two digits (for example, 99 for 1999), it assumes that the two missing digits are 19. It will display January 6, ...