Auto Completion of Form Fields

Rebekah,

I'm not so sure that there are any standards for this yet. One of the
sites I referenced recently was http://www.kayak.com/ - try typing in
your city name in the To or From airport on the home page. The
question really comes down to error prevention to me. If you are
offering the auto suggest as a way to build a dynamic drop-down that
reveals a finite set of values, perhaps a standard text box entry
isn't the right element to use. However, if you're just offering
suggestions, like Google Suggest, then, just like them, a standard
text box is probably all you need. The options that appear for people
are a bonus!

One other thing, from the work we've done converting a couple of our
free form text input boxes in to auto suggest components, feedback is
critical. For one of our components, we actually populate some
additional information based on what was chosen/entered in the
component - we added a small spinning icon to show that something was
happening based on the persons action.

Hope I answered your question!

Jon

On 2/12/07, Rebekah Sedaca <rsedaca at capstrat.com> wrote:
> I am working on a client project, where the client is gradually
> transitioning forms on their site to use auto completion (w/ AJAX). I
> would like to visually signal to users which form fields are auto
> completing and which ones are "static". I am wondering if there is a
> "pattern" for alerting to users this type of functionality. We can
> create something for this client's purpose, but I would like leverage
> any convention, if there is already one out there.
>
>
>
> Rebekah Sedaca, User Experience Designer
>
> Capstrat
>
> 1201 Edwards Mill Road
>
> Suite 102
>
> Raleigh, NC 27607
>
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>
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>
> www.capstrat.com <http://www.capstrat.com/>
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>
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