User Experience Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for user experience researchers and experts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I have a question regarding displaying the forms in the read only mode or a view mode. For example after one users inserts all the data (I use infield top aligned form labels) and then another user views this information without being able to edit it.
What is the logic behind it....Is it better to have left/right aligned labels than top aligned because they use less space in view mode?
The layout of the form depends on the purpose of the form and users (who is going to fill it)
1st option is towards the traditional approach and will take comparatively less time to be filled. As you have provided the right amount of spaces between each input box and the size of main action button i.e SIGN UP is not distracted by t&c.
2nd option: Doesn't provide enough spacing between each input box which is breaking the eye movement. The form will work the most for an application or website which will be used majorly by people of younger age group.
The problem with left or right align vs top is related to searching for an item inside a list and correlation to the nearest item.
Example: a user visually scans/searches for a telephone number inside a form and usually scans through the list of Field Names and after finding "Phone Number" he looks to the nearest value. So in this case, having the Field Names on top would make it harder for him to find the information (the list becomes scrambled).
The same with showing "read only" view where the fields disappear, the idea is to have the Field Names nicely aligned so the user can easily search through. The difference will be made by spacing or by adding soft visual details that split the information into chunks.
This becomes less important when the form has less elements like a login form but it still matters.
Also I wouldn't recommend having field information/name inside the actual field.
