E-Commerce Blog

Online forms have become much more elegant and usable in the last couple of years as developers take advantage of ?Web 2.0? technologies like visual effects and ?behind-the-scenes? calls to the server. In fact, I have seen forms that are just downright fun to fill out, which is something that I never thought I would admit. However, developers need to understand the cost of using these technologies, and some basic best practices with regard to implementing them.

First, most of the ?Web 2.0? features that we speak about are created using JavaScript, which is interpreted and run by a web browser, such as Internet Explorer. There are many cases where someone may not have JavaScript available, or it has been turned off in his browser. This is an important consideration because if an online form interface is not ?degradable,? users that do not have JavaScript will not be able to interact with it. For example, if you have a contact form that requires Ajax calls to send the…

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Programmers: Web 2.0 Forms

I’ve written previously about frameworks and how they help developers build web applications. For the most part, my praise of frameworks has been directed at those of us who develop web applications, such as coding up the Ruby, Perl, PHP or .Net scripts that make applications work. However, frameworks can also be used to help teams work together, as in the case of a graphic designer and a web application developer. I can say from experience that it is often difficult to get creative people from different disciplines to work effectively together. Enter the Blueprint CSS framework.

Blueprint CSS is a framework for visually styling web pages with Cascading Style Sheets. Rather than writing your own CSS for every website that you work on, Blueprint provides a foundation of CSS styles to work with and build upon. As CSS gets more advanced, and the shortcomings of web design are overcome, a framework like this can prevent problems, as well as give developers the tools to bring the…

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Frameworks For Web Designers