[ID Discuss] Error messaging best practices

[Julie Stanford]

We've found an effective way of error messaging on the web through
testing and many years of experience which we tend to use on all of our
web design projects that involve forms. It has several parts:

1) Mark all the fields that have an error in a color (like bold red)

2) At the top of the page, put an eyecatching icon indicating an error
(preferably something friendly) and intro text such as "Some information
below is missing or incorrect. Please look at the item(s) marked in red
and enter the requested information."

3) Follow the intro message described in point 2 above with a bulleted
list of the fields that have a problem and a simple explanation of the
problem. For example:

Some information below is missing or incorrect. Please look at the
item(s) marked in red and enter the requested information.
- Resource: Enter a resource name that has not previously been used. The
resource name you entered is already used by another resource.
- Resource type: Select a resource type.

 
- Julie Stanford
________________________________________________________________________
__

Julie Stanford
Principal
julie at slicedbreaddesign.com
www.slicedbreaddesign.com <http://www.slicedbreaddesign.com/> 
 <http://www.slicedbreaddesign.com/>  
phone:   650-625-1925
mobile:  650-799-7225
fax:       240-525-1315



 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.interactiondesigners.com/pipermail/discuss-interactiondesigners.com/attachments/20040119/2c3b8db5/attachment.htm>