# Forms – Bad Habits & Basic Enhancements

> Up your form game and stop frustrating your users. Cut out those bad habits and make simple enhancements to your web forms to please the user.

Published: 2019-12-06 · Updated: 2026-07-25 · Author: John Slater · Canonical: https://www.slaterjohn.com/forms-bad-habits-and-basic-enhancements

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I’ve put together this series of articles to share some of the lessons I’ve learned over my years in web design and development.

## Introduction

I’ve spent a lot of my career working in agile teams where quick turnaround and quick results outweigh perfection. Phrases like “_Done not perfect_“, “Get it released and we’ll come back to it” and “iterate iterate iterate” were not unheard of.

While this leads to a better product and faster releases it’s not uncommon to never “come back to it” and never make it perfect. Ultimately the user is the one who pays when you take a shortcut you never correct.

Forms are boring. No one enjoys creating a form from scratch. I bet when a form is part of a project it’s more than likely an important part – one that probably needs a decent amount of UX focus.

By illuminating these bad habits and promoting some basic enhancements your next form will be both “done” and pretty damn close to “perfect”.

## Series

1.  [Labels should be clickable](/labels-should-be-touch-targets)
2.  [Not all numbers are alike](/number-inputs-you-should-probably-not-use-the-number-type)
3.  [Placeholders are hints, not labels](/placeholders-are-hints-not-labels-bad-habits-enhancements)

## Future articles

I add to this series when a bad habit annoys me enough to write it up – validation and stupidly long forms are both on the list. If you want to know when the next one lands, follow the [RSS feed](/feed.xml).