forms

Radio buttons - null option

Hi,

I am wondering if it is (already?) acceptable to omit the explicit
null option in a radio button control?
I have used radiobuttons for a non-required control. To apply the
null option the user would have to 'unselect' the one selected
radio button (this to save place by not adding a fourth radio button
or to not have to use a drop down control).
I suppose it is kind of an unusual behavior but it seems to me that
is is learnable, and I have seen it in product design. Has this kind
of behavior been introduced in forms before?

Thanks for your opinions,
Emely

Forms - selecting a country

There have been previous discussions on this topic, one here:
http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=23593

But they haven't really focused on what I'm after: your favorite examples
for having a person specify what country they live in, in the context of a
web form. Anyone come across a particularly effective way of collecting this
information recently (including consideration for accessibility)? Bonus
points if it does not involve a gigantic dropdown with ~ 195 countries in
it.

Two column form layout

Hello everyone,

Does anyone know of any data, or have an opinion, about laying out forms in
multiple columns?

At my job, the business is constantly complaining about all the white space
on the right side of a long form when I lay it out in the standard way.
Arranging the labels and inputs into two columns, flowing from left to
right, seems an obvious solution to the problem.

UIs for Creating Forms

I'm looking for examples of UIs that allow people to create their own
fill-in forms or modify existing forms. One that I've used is SurveyMonkey

http://www.surveymonkey.com/

Are there others that are especially good? Are there any that allow
WYSIWYG modifications?

Thanks for any suggestions!

Mitchell Gass
uLab | PDA: Learning from Users | Designing with Users
Berkeley, CA 94707 USA
+1 510 525-6864 office
+1 415 637-6552 mobile
+1 510 525-4246 fax
http://www.participatorydesign.com/

How to display 'required' form fields when vast majority are required

I am wondering how I might indicate (or not indicate) required fields on a
form where pretty much every field is required.

While in the past I've used the lazy man's convention of indicating required
fields with an asterisk, presenting a page where every label is preceded by
an asterisk seems ridiculous.

Yet, there may be other pages on the site with a more balanced mix of
required and optional fields, where I might wish to use asterisks.