Comments on: Auto-Selecting a Form Field http://o2b.net/archives/usability-observation-auto-selecting-a-form-field I'm all done now. Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:35:50 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.4 by: Velogymnosophist http://o2b.net/archives/usability-observation-auto-selecting-a-form-field#comment-4310 Mon, 10 Jul 2006 07:19:18 +0000 http://o2b.net/archives/usability-observation-auto-selecting-a-form-field#comment-4310 “A good example everyone can relate to is Google’s home page. As soon as you get there it moves the focus to the most important element on the page, the search field. This, I’d be willing to bet, is another safe assumption.” Sure enough. But in the case of Google, how many of us still actually GO to Google's homepage to search? The biggest problem I used to have on Yahoo! Mail back in my dark ages of dial-up (hey, some still use it today) was after tabbing to username field, entering username, and tabbing to password field, halfway through typing my password, the page would finish loading and grab focus back to username. Ctrl-z (ah that was also in my dark ages of MS product usage) saved the username, but unfortunately I always had to re-type the entire password. Annoyingly frustrating indeed. I used to send emails to support, but nobody listened. They all though I had a problem with cookies or something. HA! “A good example everyone can relate to is Google’s home page. As soon as you get there it moves the focus to the most important element on the page, the search field. This, I’d be willing to bet, is another safe assumption.”

Sure enough. But in the case of Google, how many of us still actually GO to Google’s homepage to search?

The biggest problem I used to have on Yahoo! Mail back in my dark ages of dial-up (hey, some still use it today) was after tabbing to username field, entering username, and tabbing to password field, halfway through typing my password, the page would finish loading and grab focus back to username. Ctrl-z (ah that was also in my dark ages of MS product usage) saved the username, but unfortunately I always had to re-type the entire password.

Annoyingly frustrating indeed.

I used to send emails to support, but nobody listened. They all though I had a problem with cookies or something. HA!

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