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I’m not sure if this is a joke but if not.. Governments often have complicated forms that need to cater for a broad range of users. So you need things like con

I’m not sure if this is a joke but if not.. Governments often have complicated forms that need to cater for a broad range of users. So you need things like conditioning steps, file uploads and progress saving. Have fun doing that in pure HTML and CSS.

huygens6363 2y ago
Broad range of users means keeping it simple and sticking to the standards. The complexity of government forms is not about fancy custom dialogs, elaborate data types or cute animations. There are usually a lot of (simple) questions. Yes/no, checkboxes, dates and times, free fields. The list is not endless. These forms needs to be frustration free as possible. IME all easy targets if you don’t use JS.
azornathogron 2y ago
gov.uk recommends having a single question per page - principally to make the form easier for users, but it also means you can handle progress saving and conditional sections and so on server-side. https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/design/form-structure https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/design/form-structure
- IshKebab 2y ago
  gov.uk is pretty good, and their forms are quite good. But there are definitely still places where this design is worse than one using JavaScript. For example when paying for tax free childcare you have to enter a date for when you want the payment to go out. Not only is the date picker just three edit boxes (no "tomorrow" button for example), but it isn't validated at all so if you put in today's date (quite reasonable) and click next it will only tell you on the next page that you can't use today. It would be much better if a tiny bit of JavaScript told you as soon as you put the date in, and if it had a "tomorrow" button, which would also require some JavaScript. JavaScript was invented for a reason!
  - petepete 2y ago
    > It would be much better if a tiny bit of JavaScript told you as soon as you put the date in, and if it had a "tomorrow" button, which would also require some JavaScript. There's so much research that shows the opposite. You might prefer that but government websites need to work for everyone, and showing validation messages automatically confuses less technically able people, and it's really hard to make it fully accessible. At which point do you announce the mistake to a screen reader? Where do you shift focus? etc. It was designed this way for a specific reason. Services that feel the need to extend or change it do have the option to though.
    - g15jv2dp 2y ago
      > There's so much research that shows the opposite. Care to link it? It should be easy to do, if there's so much of it.
    - IshKebab 2y ago
      > At which point do you announce the mistake to a screen reader? There is a standard for this: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/Attributes/aria-invalid https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/A... But I would suggest just having the validation in addition to the current behaviour. > Where do you shift focus? You don't? > There's so much research that shows the opposite. There's research that shows that a "tomorrow" button is bad??
      - petepete 2y ago
        > There's research that shows that a "tomorrow" button is bad?? That client side validation isn't always accessible. More info here: https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/validation/ https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/validation/
        IshKebab 2y ago
        That page doesn't say that at all. In fact they even mention a character count component that gives instant feedback.
petepete 2y ago
I do, thanks. https://design-system.service.gov.uk/ https://design-system.service.gov.uk/ (I'm aware the design system has a sprinkling of JS, but it offers a few in-page enhancements and works just fine without)

huygens6363 2y ago

Broad range of users means keeping it simple and sticking to the standards. The complexity of government forms is not about fancy custom dialogs, elaborate data types or cute animations. There are usually a lot of (simple) questions. Yes/no, checkboxes, dates and times, free fields. The list is not endless. These forms needs to be frustration free as possible. IME all easy targets if you don’t use JS.

azornathogron 2y ago

gov.uk recommends having a single question per page - principally to make the form easier for users, but it also means you can handle progress saving and conditional sections and so on server-side. https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/design/form-structure https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/design/form-structure

IshKebab 2y ago
gov.uk is pretty good, and their forms are quite good. But there are definitely still places where this design is worse than one using JavaScript. For example when paying for tax free childcare you have to enter a date for when you want the payment to go out. Not only is the date picker just three edit boxes (no "tomorrow" button for example), but it isn't validated at all so if you put in today's date (quite reasonable) and click next it will only tell you on the next page that you can't use today. It would be much better if a tiny bit of JavaScript told you as soon as you put the date in, and if it had a "tomorrow" button, which would also require some JavaScript. JavaScript was invented for a reason!
- petepete 2y ago
  > It would be much better if a tiny bit of JavaScript told you as soon as you put the date in, and if it had a "tomorrow" button, which would also require some JavaScript. There's so much research that shows the opposite. You might prefer that but government websites need to work for everyone, and showing validation messages automatically confuses less technically able people, and it's really hard to make it fully accessible. At which point do you announce the mistake to a screen reader? Where do you shift focus? etc. It was designed this way for a specific reason. Services that feel the need to extend or change it do have the option to though.
  - g15jv2dp 2y ago
    > There's so much research that shows the opposite. Care to link it? It should be easy to do, if there's so much of it.
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    > At which point do you announce the mistake to a screen reader? There is a standard for this: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/Attributes/aria-invalid https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/A... But I would suggest just having the validation in addition to the current behaviour. > Where do you shift focus? You don't? > There's so much research that shows the opposite. There's research that shows that a "tomorrow" button is bad??
    - petepete 2y ago
      > There's research that shows that a "tomorrow" button is bad?? That client side validation isn't always accessible. More info here: https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/validation/ https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/validation/
      - IshKebab 2y ago
        That page doesn't say that at all. In fact they even mention a character count component that gives instant feedback.

petepete 2y ago

I do, thanks. https://design-system.service.gov.uk/ https://design-system.service.gov.uk/ (I'm aware the design system has a sprinkling of JS, but it offers a few in-page enhancements and works just fine without)