Adding hints to login/registration form fields

[davidbourguignon]

Could it be possible to clarify a bit the login/registration system for computer-illiterate people, by putting a grayed-out example of the kind of data they have to enter in each login field?

I have already seen this on other websites, and it is very effective IMHO. For example:

• ID: grayed-out johnsmith
• Email: grayed-out john@…
• Etc.

Of course, the grayed-out examples should be considered for i18n, so that the form displays examples relevant to each culture/language.

[GaryJ]

Thanks for the ticket @davidbourguignon.

There's some suggestion that ​placeholders are bad for accessibility.

Even those that are computer illiterate, I would expect them to understand the concept of logging in, probably even have logged in to other sites before. Adding in placeholder text may even confuse them more - "Why do I need to enter johnsmith when my name is Gary Jones?"

What I do think could be clarified, and it probably worth it's own ticket, is changing "Email" to "Email Address".

[davidbourguignon]

Hi @GaryJ thanks for the quick feedback! The webpage you are referring to is unfortunately unreachable.

Believe me, after two years dealing with a diverse crowd of subscribers, many computer-illiterate people do not understand what a "login" or "ID" or "identifier" is... They know what an "email address", a "name" or "surname" is, though.

Let me rephrase it this way: my proposal is not to add a placeholder (as the generated password on the reinit password page is), but simply a grayed-out hint in the field. You can write on top of it. This is quite a common way to give people info about how to fill a form field in.

You will find some positive opinion about their usefulness ​in a Drupal forum... :-)

Alternatively, you could:

• Put this hint in the text label of the form field, such as: "login (for example johnsmith) : <field>"
• Add a tooltip that pops up when the mouse is over the field

Yes, I do agree: "Email" should be clarified by "Email address" (in fact, I am using the French version of WordPress and the i18n already clarified this in the translation). I have created another ticket for this.

Replying to GaryJ:

Thanks for the ticket @davidbourguignon.

There's some suggestion that ​placeholders are bad for accessibility.

Even those that are computer illiterate, I would expect them to understand the concept of logging in, probably even have logged in to other sites before. Adding in placeholder text may even confuse them more - "Why do I need to enter johnsmith when my name is Gary Jones?"

What I do think could be clarified, and it probably worth it's own ticket, is changing "Email" to "Email Address".