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February 10, 2012
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Forms 2.0 - Better forms without code

  • February 10, 2012
  • 126 replies
  • 35574 views
[Please add your comments below to help build a strong case]

Since the FORMS 2.0 idea from Glen Lipka has long been lost, it's time to bring it back and get it on the agenda.  It only been raised as an issue for 3 years and more than 2 versions of this community.  Even one of recent ideas from the community for the Amazing Race Idea was for form improvements: Form Widgets!.

Basically Forms need to be come way easier without manipulation through code.  There are a lot of small improvements that could be made to the form functionality that would be a great benefit to clients without access to a web developer skill set.  

At one time or another, I have had marketers request most of the following list of form improvements:

  • support for HTML5 form elements
  • allow pre-population on a field by field basis as a form designer attribute
  • allow text fields to optionally concatenate the new value with the existing data
  • field masking for phone, sin number etc.
  • add real-time (onblur) validation, validation test conditions and  contextual error msgs
    • email regex,
    • min and max for numbers etc. 
    • phone with or without extention
    • domain name for spam exclusion - i.e. mickmouse@example.com a@a.com
    • alpha-only for names/text fields
    • Automatic formating for proper case including whitespace trimming
  • better positioning of the field label and error msg
  • more form layouts in terms of 2-3 columns layouts as well as fields that can span the columns
  • more control over the submit button:
    • its style/image
    • dynamic button text both before and after click text to make the form reusable on more that one landing page within the landing page editor
    • enable/disable submit based upon required fields/validation
  • provide more advanced type of controls:
    • date pickers,
    • sliders (range),
    • dropdowns (combobox) with icons, option groups etc.
    • better support for checkboxes/radio with multi-select 
  • dependant selections or skip logic i.e. country/state and surveys
  • geo-ip support for country/state
  • automatic detection and support for iframes to get parent parameters, adjust the form's target = _top etc.
  • better (dynamic) follow up options - new windows, dynamic redirect based upon other form fields, parameters or cookies
  • Allow fields from SFDC objects other than contact and lead

Forms have been one of the least attended to areas of Marketo; it has literally been years since any significant improvements have been made while the competition has not been standing still waiting.

Below is a small list for just from this version of community:

126 replies

July 17, 2013
I agree that these would all be beneficial features. I would also like to see a responsive functionality with forms.
I would be willing to beta test these features when they're ready.
July 17, 2013
Hi Community,

I love this discussion, and finally took matters into my own hands today and dug into reworking my forms myself with HTML and CSS. 

The result is here - http://fatstax.com/contact-us/

Would appreciate the feedback and any info on adding a better Submit button. 

Rusty
July 17, 2013
Hey Rusty, looking good. You might want to add a rule to disable list style for your form. Not sure, but I doubt you want those bullets next to each label. Removing padding isn't a bad idea either, so …

form ul {
  padding-left: 0;
  list-style: none;
}
Rafael_Santoni1
Level 5
July 17, 2013
Rusty,

I was able to submit the form without filling out anything. You should turn on validation on it. My 2 cents.

Rafael
July 18, 2013
Thanks for all the help Neil, after some playing around I got rid of the bullets.

The original form has required fields but that is lost when I copy paste, looking for that now.  anybody know the location of the javascript?

Rusty
July 18, 2013
Three form ideas:

1. Dynamic picklists should work with progressive profiling.

Currently dynamic State and Province for US and Canada in forms do not allow this--if I set up my forms to only show "State/Province" when "USA or Canada" is selected as the country, I can't also use progressive profiling in that form.

http://community.marketo.com/MarketoArticle?id=kA050000000KysH

2. City/State lookup by Postal Code.

Here is an example of a form that automatically generates the City and State based on Postal Code entry (for USA).

3. I'd like to promote this idea: Create Picklist at Field Level

Ana B posted:

I've noticed that the only way to create a picklist/multi-picklist is at the form level. I think we should be able to create these lists at the field level.

For example, we want to always have country be a dropdown to create standardization in our database. However, that means that on each form we create, we have to change country to a picklist and then enter in all of the country values. Would be much easier if we could do that one time at the creation of fields, or one time at the field management level, and have it be standard throughout Marketo.


http://community.marketo.com/MarketoIdeaDetail?id=08750000000IZXzAAO
July 20, 2013

July 20, 2013
Hello everyone!

Popping in to update: the designs and devlopment for Forms 2.0 are making great progress! The engineers and I are working hard to implement all, if not many, of the improvements mentioned in this community. Some of the changes we've all ready implemented are: 

Conditional logic/ Skip logic/ Progressive profiling
Horizontal stack-ability of fields
Checkboxes with multi-select functionality
A new user interface with a great look and feel!

We know Forms 2.0 has been in anticipation so we are really working on making it something spectacular. Thank you for all the suggested ideas listed so far as they have been the backbone in the changes we have been implementing. Please continue to post new ideas here, I will check be checking daily!


Chewy

July 20, 2013
Absolutely key ingredient, make it work on the corporate website (not in a iframe) AND mobile
August 14, 2013
Is there an anticipated release date for Forms 2.0 yet?