[IxDA Discuss] Marking required fields on desktop UIs?

[Mark Canlas]

Sure, I can think of one. It's more behavioral than visual though...
Mandatory fields that need to be filled out just won't let you proceed to
the next screen. If you try to continue (like pressing enter on the password
screen without giving a password), that yellow tooltip/balloon pops up (with
an auditory warning), reminding you that a password is necessary. Also, for
wizards, the next button is usually grayed out until all of the required
text fields have something in them. Type at least one letter/number, then
the button un-disables itself.

-Mark

> I am having trouble determining if there is a standard or best
> practice for marking which fields are required on a desktop
> application form.  This is a fairly standard Windows UI with lots of
> dialogs.  Each dialog has some mandatory and some optional fields, and
> which are which tends to change with the data, system parameters, etc.
> 
> Therefore, I want to have some visual treatment so users can know at a
> glance what fields are mandatory.  On the Web there is a convention to
> mark required fields with asterisks (*) but this convention does not
> seem to have been back-ported to desktop UIs.