Forms on the web have become terrible. Lost state. No keyboard nav. Weird refreshes. Mobile hostile.
The reason is #frontend developers that think clientside state management is how to implement a form. It is not.
Good forms work without client #javascript (and then are progressive enhanced by js to work even better).
Good forms always submit. Good forms remember values and display problems inline.
How do we fix the misconceptions and, in the process, fix the forms on the web ?
Two other notes.
1. Luke W has THE book on design of forms here https://www.lukew.com/resources/web_form_design.asp
2. Most of this is downstream frontend frameworks ignoring POST so they don't need to teach/handle httponly session state for persisting values. Arguably these types of framework are a poor choice for UX.
I just published ~3K words + diagrams + code samples + demo videos on the frontend networking stack I’m choosing for Little CRM, and all my apps going forward. https://thomascannon.me/guides/fixing-the-rails-networking-stack I know that’s a ton to dig into, but I believe this is a very strong path forward for resilient and maintainable web apps.
Brian LeRoux 💚
Thomas Cannon