lucidspoon

This question is loosely based on the article Functionality or Design that I just read.

I'm a programmer at a small company (only one other developer and then the president and his wife). I've tried to keep the design and coding as simple as possible, and I'm not much of a designer, so there's probably a lot more that could be done as far as that. There isn't much of a need for much design, since our site / program is just about data collection, so it's all just datagrids and forms.

The problem is that I keep getting requests to change little things like the size of one textbox to match the size of a dropdown on one form and to match the size of a different dropdown on a different form for example. (We have A LOT of forms by the way.) I understand that something like that might be a little more pleasing to the eye, but where does it stop? How much thought should be put into design vs the work that it would take to do and the extra code that would be there to sift through?

The question isn't just about textboxes and dropdowns, but any tweaks that would deviate from a standard that a designer has set. I've gotten to the point where I've just said that a change like that can happen when we have a full time designer, because I don't want to sacrifice my time to make little changes that most people aren't going to notice and not have time to actually produce new functionality or fix bugs.

What are your thoughts?

Dubbs

Well I would just use the "default" values of the browser/software that displaying the form. When your boss, or whoever comes to you, then you can say that is the way the browser/software is generating the information.

If it is your boss, I would also point out that your job description is to program not design. Explain the difference, and suggest that he should look into maybe contracting or hiring a designer.

Awake

Before you start to build anything you should sit down with the client and discuss the design and look of the website. build some mock ups and get all these problems out of the way before you start coding! thats what we do anyway..

lucidspoon

We're not actually designing sites for other companies. It's a single web-based tool that several companies use. There are a lot of components (forms and pages) to it, so everything needs to have one standard, and that's the problem I'm having, because my boss's wife wants to change things like size and position of controls depending on what page you're on.

My boss said that he talked with someone who is a project lead at another software company this weekend and asked him what the best advice he could give about doing software development the way we are. He said that the main thing is to not worry about the details. It doesn't matter if everything is perfectly lined up. You just need to keep producing as much as we can functionally and then worry about the details later, especially since we're so small.

masonbarge

What I would suggest is a very standardized form template that looks nice. I can see where he's coming from (and I can also see where you're coming from, LOL, no way I would style a form just for my own use).

Anyway, to do a simple template, you need an envelope. You could use a frameset.standard CSS but I'd personally do a div.formbox for more flexibility. Use a border or not. If it's appropriate, a solid bar at the top with a white "H4" header is fairly ok.

Then I'd make a row class, similar to a <tr>, and inside it I would put the text in a div that floats left and the inputs in a div that floats right.

An alternative is to not have the row box, but have a div for text (you can use <label> and <legend> or not) that floats left and a div for the input that floats right but not left, to break the next line.

Put in a little margin/padding, do a simple button style, and then they will all look the same and neatly aligned right and left.

markwolves

Can't you allow your customer to make formating changes themselves, knock up a little control panel and then they can change as often as they wish...