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Right align forms
I just came across a very detailed, polemic against left aligned forms. You can read the post here.
The basic idea is simple; left aligned forms require more eye movement than right aligned forms. For those who aren't afraid to get into some Pythagorean theorem, the poster gets positively mathematical about it.
I have only one bone to pick with the premise...
Alignment is a good grouping tool, because it creates the appearance of a straight line down the aligned axis. So in cases where a form appears on the right side of a screen, among other controls, left aligning that form will serve to strengthen its boundaries, and preserve the group.
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I wonder why the author of the article is bothering with all the formulas. There’s a much more compelling argument against left-aligned forms: it’s harder to see which label belongs to which inputfield. Off course this has to do with distances, but that’s just the distance between the end of the text and the beginning of the form. This length is obviously minimized when right-aligning.
Comment by Okke, Wednesday, August 30, 2006 @ 12:18 pm