Simplifying the web, one step at a time

Some things in Web design are too complex. They make a site hard to build, hard to use, and hard to maintain. So I’m simplifying the everyday components of a Web site and writing case studies and examples in a new feature called Simplified.

The first target to be Simplified is validation errors on forms. Most forms require validation — checks to see that required fields have been filled out with the right information. But when a mistake was made, how do you let the user know? The approaches taken by many sites leave much to be desired. Go take a look at the Simplified Form Errors to see what the problem is, how we solved it, and some sample code that gets the job done.