I’m loving the feedback and discussion happening on the Blog comment form post. I just wanted to pick up on Gordon’s comment about styling the comment box:

I’m not entirely sure that re-styling this area to NOT look like a form is entirely ‘correct’ though. Yes, highlight it with pale yellow, but the subtle reminder that a indented box requires that you PUT SOMETHING IN IT is now lost… instead I have boxes that are pushed up at me and seem slightly counter-intuitive.

His comment has been bouncing around in my head, and I may end up changing the border colours again to reflect an indented box. I’ve been wondering why form fields have traditionally been styled as indented - Gordon’s suggestion that it implies you should put something in it fascinates me. I’ve never really thought of it that way.

So many form fields have now been styled with something a plain border like this: border: 1px solid #000; (As I write this in Wordpress I’m surrounded by them.)

In some ways, having a form field stand out (like a form submit button does by default), rather than indented, might make it more obvious that here’s something which seems to sit above the page, like a paper form I need to fill in which is sitting on my desk right now.

Of course, this is all subtle stuff… but I do wonder if designers (who like changing the default form field styling) think about the indenting of form fields as something related to usability.

PS Perhaps I’m so tired I’m making no sense here, please excuse any sleepy ramblings.