Will Meurer is a UI Guy at Facebook’s To field in the Compose Message dialog is helpful without getting in the way. When you focus the cursor on the field, instructions popout below the field.
Lot’s of sites and apps do this sort of thing, but I believe Facebook gets it right. The subtle differences that set this apart are:
- Instructions only show up when you’re focused on the field. Too much on the page at once clutters the look and feel and makes it more difficult to focus on the information most important to you at any point in time. When I’m looking at the subject and message (probably more time spent on those fields than the to field) I don’t care about the instructions for the To field.
- Instructions overlay atop the subject field. The message doesn’t push down the rest of the form when displayed, as it would if it were placed inline.
- It looks connected to the To field. It’s easy to tell when interacting with the To field that the instructions are for the To field, because both the instructions look connected to the To field and the timing of showing upon entering the field’s focus and hiding when exiting connects the message to the field.
- When a list of suggested names or lists autocomplete, they cover the help message. The help message is there to give you an idea of what few things are accepted. Once you start typing, you’ll see results, so you no longer need the instructions.
