Bring Your Forms Up To Date With CSS3 and HTML5 Validation - Webdesigntuts+

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Jim Nielsen on Jan 2nd 2013 with 89 Comments and 51 Reactions
Tutorial Details
Topic: HTML5 form validation, CSS3 Difficulty: Beginner Estimated Completion Time: 45 mins Lets look at how to create a functional form which validates users data, client-side. With that done, well cover prettying it up using CSS, including some CSS3! Republished Tutorial Every few weeks, we revisit some of our reader's favorite posts from throughout the history of the site. This tutorial was first published in November of 2011.
Step 1: Conceptualization Functionality

First we want to conceptualize what our form is going to look like and how it is going to function. For this example, lets create a simple contact form that asks for the following information from the user: Name Email Website Message
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We want to make sure the user is entering the information correctly. To accomplish this, we will use HTML5s new client-side validation techniques. What about users who dont have HTML5 capabilities? You can simply use server-side validation, but that will be beyond the scope of this article.
Step 2: Conceptualization Form

Lets get an idea of what we want our form to look like by creating a rough mockup.
As you can see, the following elements make up our form: Form Title Required fields notification Form labels Form inputs Placeholder text Form field hints Submit Button Now that weve specified which elements make up our form, we can create the HTML markup.
Step 3: HTML Starter Code

Lets create our basic HTML markup from the form concept we created. 001 <!DOCTYPE html>
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002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010
<html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>HTML5 Contact Form</title> <link rel="stylesheet" media="screen" href="styles.css" > </head> <body> </body> </html>
Up to this point, our HTML file will still appear blank in the browser. This is simply starter code for an HTML5 page.
Step 4: HTML Form

Lets create the HTML form (well leave the action method blank for now, since server-side validation will not be covered in this tutorial): 001 002 <form class="contact_form" action="" method="post" name="contact_form"> </form>
Step 5: HTML Form Elements

To keep our form content organized and structured, well wrap our form elements (label, input, etc) in a list. So lets start by creating the form header and our first input element: 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 <ul> <li> <h2>Contact Us</h2> <span class="required_notification">* Denotes Required Field</span </li> <li> <label for="name">Name:</label> <input type="text" name="name" /> </li> </ul>
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Form Hints
As seen in our mockup, were going to have formatting hints for the email and website fields. So well add our hints under the input fields where necessary, and give them a class so we can style them later. 001 002 003 004 005 <li> <label for="email">Email:</label> <input type="text" name="email" /> <span class="form_hint">Proper format "name@something.com"</span> </li>
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The Remaining Input Elements

Lets go ahead and create our remaining form elements, remembering to wrap each section in a list item. 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 <li> <label for="website">Website:</label> <input type="text" name="website" /> <span class="form_hint">Proper format "http://someaddress.com"</span> </li> <li> <label for="message">Message:</label> <textarea name="message" cols="40" rows="6" > </li> <li> <button class="submit" type="submit">Submit Form</button> </li>
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Step 6: Adding the Placeholder Attribute

One of the first improvements HTML5 brings to web forms (one youre probably already familiar with) is the ability to set the placeholder text. Placeholder text is displayed when the input field is either empty or not in focus. Lets add the placeholder attribute to our input elements. This will help the user understand what they should enter in each field. 001 002 003 <input type="text" name="name" placeholder="John Doe" /> <input type="text" name="email" placeholder="john_doe@example.com" /> <input type="text" name="website" placeholder="http://johndoe.com/" required/>
Quick Tip: Style your placeholder Text

Heres a quick tip, if you want to style your placeholder text, there are some browser prefixes to help you: 001 002 003 004 005 006 :-moz-placeholder { color: blue; } ::-webkit-input-placeholder { color: blue; }
Support for the placeholder attribute is pretty well established in modern browsers (except IE9, sorry). If you really need to have it supported across all browsers, there are some javascript solutions you could look into.
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Step 7: Basic CSS

Lets add some basic CSS to give our form some structure. Ill walk you through the rules:
Remove :focus Style

Webkit automatically adds some styling to input elements when they are in focus. Since well be adding our own styles, we want to override these defaults: 001 *:focus {outline: none;}
Typographic Styles
Lets add some typographic styles to our form elements: 001 002 003
body {font: 14px/21px "Lucida Sans", "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode" .contact_form h2, .contact_form label {font-family:Georgia, Times, "Times New Rom .form_hint, .required_notification {font-size: 11px;}
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List Styles
Lets style our list elements to give our form some structure: 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 .contact_form ul { width:750px; list-style-type:none; list-style-position:outside; margin:0px; padding:0px; } .contact_form li{ padding:12px; border-bottom:1px solid #eee; position:relative; }
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Also, lets add a slight border to the top and bottom sections of the form. We can accomplish this by using the :first-child and :last-child selectors. These select, as the names imply, the first and last elements in the <ul> list. This adds some useful visual sectioning to our form. Keep in mind that these CSS selectors are not supported in older browsers. Since this is not vital to key functionality, were rewarding our those who use current browsers. 001 002 003 .contact_form li:first-child, .contact_form li:last-child { border-bottom:1px solid #777; }
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Form Header
Lets style the header section of our form. This includes the heading tag and the notification that informs users that the asterisk (*) indicates required fields. 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 .contact_form h2 { margin:0; display: inline; } .required_notification { color:#d45252; margin:5px 0 0 0; display:inline; float:right; }
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Form Input Elements

Lets style all of our core form elements, the ones used to collect user information. 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 013 014 .contact_form label { width:150px; margin-top: 3px; display:inline-block; float:left; padding:3px; } .contact_form input { height:20px; width:220px; padding:5px 8px; } .contact_form textarea {padding:8px; width:300px;} .contact_form button {margin-left:156px;}
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Now, lets add some extra visual CSS styles. Some of these are CSS3 styles that reward users who use modern browsers. 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 013 014 015 016 017 018 019 020 021 022 023 024 025 026 027 028 .contact_form input, .contact_form textarea { border:1px solid #aaa; box-shadow: 0px 0px 3px #ccc, 0 10px 15px #eee inset; border-radius:2px; } .contact_form input:focus, .contact_form textarea:focus { background: #fff; border:1px solid #555; box-shadow: 0 0 3px #aaa; } /* Button Style */ button.submit { background-color: #68b12f; background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#68b12f background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #68b12f, #50911e); background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #68b12f, #50911e); background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #68b12f, #50911e); background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #68b12f, #50911e); background: linear-gradient(top, #68b12f, #50911e); border: 1px solid #509111; border-bottom: 1px solid #5b992b; border-radius: 3px; -webkit-border-radius: 3px; -moz-border-radius: 3px; -ms-border-radius: 3px; -o-border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: inset 0 1px 0 0 #9fd574; -webkit-box-shadow: 0 1px 0 0 #9fd574 inset ;
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029 030 031 032 033 034 035 036 037 038 039 040 041 042 043 044 045 046 047 048 049
-moz-box-shadow: 0 1px 0 0 #9fd574 inset; -ms-box-shadow: 0 1px 0 0 #9fd574 inset; -o-box-shadow: 0 1px 0 0 #9fd574 inset; color: white; font-weight: bold; padding: 6px 20px; text-align: center; text-shadow: 0 -1px 0 #396715; } button.submit:hover { opacity:.85; cursor: pointer; } button.submit:active { border: 1px solid #20911e; box-shadow: 0 0 10px 5px #356b0b inset; -webkit-box-shadow:0 0 10px 5px #356b0b inset ; -moz-box-shadow: 0 0 10px 5px #356b0b inset; -ms-box-shadow: 0 0 10px 5px #356b0b inset; -o-box-shadow: 0 0 10px 5px #356b0b inset; }
Step 8: Add Some Interactivity with CSS3

Lets add a little bit of interactivity. Well make the field that is currently selected expand by adding some padding. 001 002
.contact_form input:focus, .contact_form textarea:focus { /* add this to the alre padding-right:70px;
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003
Now for browsers that support it, lets make the expansion of the field a smooth transition using CSS3. 001 002 003 004 005 006
.contact_form input, .contact_form textarea { /* add this to the already existing -moz-transition: padding .25s; -webkit-transition: padding .25s; -o-transition: padding .25s; transition: padding .25s; }
Step 9: The required Attribute in HTML5

Now its time for what weve all been waiting for: HTML5s form handling tools. Adding the required attribute to any input/textarea element will tell the browser that a value is required before the form can be submitted. Thus, a form cannot be submitted if a required field has not been filled out.
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So, lets go ahead and add the required attribute to all of our form elements (because we want them all to be filled out). 001 002 003 004 <input type="text" name="name" required /> <input type="text" name="email" required /> <input type="text" name="website" required /> <textarea name="message" cols="40" rows="6" required ></textarea>
Step 10: Styling required Fields

Youll probably notice that, visually speaking, nothing happened by adding the required attribute. We are going to style required fields using CSS. For this example, we are going to add a red asterisk as a background image in each required field. To accomplish this, we will want to first add some padding on the right side of our input where the background image will be (this will prevent text overlap if the field entry is a long string): 001 002 003 .contact_form input, .contact_form textarea { padding-right:30px; }
Now we will use the CSS pseudo selector :required to target all the form elements with a required attribute. I made a simple 1616 pixel red asterisk icon in photoshop that will serve as the visual indicator of a required field. 001 002 003 input:required, textarea:required { background: #fff url(images/red_asterisk.png) no-repeat 98% center; }
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What happens upon submission?

Right now, different browsers will do different things when a form using HTML5 elements is submitted. When the form is submitted, most browsers will prevent the form from being submitted and will display a hint to the user, marking the first field that is required and has no value. Visual styling and support for these bubble fields is quite broad. Hopefully these behaviors will become standardized in the future.
You can see current browser support for the required attribute at quirksmode.
Quick Tip:
You can actually style the bubble message somewhat in webkit using the following: 001 002 003 ::-webkit-validation-bubble-message { padding: 1em; }
Step 11: Understanding New HTML5 type Attributes and Client-Side Validation
HTML5 validation works according to the type attribute that is set within the form fields. For years HTML only
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supported a handful of type attributes, such as type="text" but with HTML5 there are a over a dozen new input types including email and url which we are going to use in our form. By combining our input type attributes with the new required attribute, the browser can now validate the forms data client-side. If a users browser does not support the new type attributes, such as type="email", it will simply default to type="text". This is actually pretty amazing. Essentially you have backwards compatibility in all browsers on earth, hooray! So what if the browser does actually support the new type attributes? For desktop browsers there is no visual difference (unless specified by custom CSS rules). A type="text" field looks the same as a type="email" field. However, for mobile browsers, there is a difference when it comes to the user interface.
An Example: The iPhone

Apples iPhone detects the form types and dynamically changes the on-screen keyboard by providing context-aware characters. For example, all email addresses require the following symbols: @ and . So the iPhone provides those characters when the input type is specified to email.
Step 12: Changing the type Attributes

We already have our form fields set to the default type="text". But now we want to change the type attribute on our email and website fields to their corresponding HTML5 type. 001 002 <input type="email" name="email" placeholder="john_doe@example.com" required /> <input type="url" name="website" placeholder="http://johndoe.com" required/>
Step 13: HTML5 Validation

As mentioned before, HTML5 validation is based on your type attributes and it is on by default. There is no specific markup required in order to activate form validation. If you wish to turn it off, you can use the novalidate attribute like this: 001 002 003 004 <form novalidate> <-- do not validate this form --> <input type="text" /> </form>
Name Field
Lets look at our first field that asks the user for his/her name. As described eariler, weve added the type="text" attribute and the required attribute. This informs the web browser that this field is mandatory and it should validate the field as simply text. So as long as the user enters at least one character in that field, it will
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validate. Now we will create our own CSS to style field inputs that are considered valid and invalid by the browser. If you remember, we used :required in our CSS to style all input elements with a required attribute. Now, we can style our required fields that are either valid or invalid by adding :valid or :invalid to our CSS rules. First, lets style fields that are invalid. For this example, we only want to style the form as invalid when it is in focus. Well add a red border, red shadow, and red icon created in photoshop to indicate the invalid field. 001 002 003 004 005
.contact_form input:focus:invalid, .contact_form textarea:focus:invalid { /* when background: #fff url(images/invalid.png) no-repeat 98% center; box-shadow: 0 0 5px #d45252; border-color: #b03535 }
Now, lets create the rules that indicate the field is valid. Well add a green border, green shadow, and greed checkmark icon made in photoshop. This will be applied to all valid fields whether they are in focus or not. 001 002 003 004 005 .contact_form input:required:valid, .contact_form textarea:required:valid { background: #fff url(images/valid.png) no-repeat 98% center; box-shadow: 0 0 5px #5cd053; border-color: #28921f; }
Now when you focus on a form field, the red invalid styling is shown. As soon as a single character has been entered in the field, it is validated and green CSS styles are shown to indicate that fact.
Email and URL Fields

Our CSS styles and validation rules are already applied to the email field because we set the type and required attributes earlier.
Step 14: Introducing the HTML5 pattern Attribute

Using the type="email" attribute as an example, it appears that most browsers validate that field as *@* (any character + the @ symbol + any character). This is obviously not very limiting but it does prevent users from entering spaces or values that are entirely wrong. In the example of the type="url" attribute, it appears as though the minimum requirement for most browsers is any character followed by a colon. So, if you entered h: then the field would validate. This is not extremely helpful but it does prevent users from entering irrelevant information, such as their email or home address. Now, you could handle being more specific on with your input values in your server-side validation; however, were going to talk about how to do that in HTML5.
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The pattern Attribute

The pattern attribute accepts a javascript regular expression. This expression is used, rather than the browser default, to validate the fields value. So our HTML now looks like this: 001 <input type="url" name="website" placeholder="http://johndoe.com" required
Now our field will only accept values that start with http:// or https:// and one additional character. These regular expression patterns can be confusing at first, but once you take the time to learn them, your forms will be open to a whole new world.
Step 15: Form Field Hints (CSS)

Now lets style our form hints that tell the user the format they should use when entering their information. 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 .form_hint { background: #d45252; border-radius: 3px 3px 3px 3px; color: white; margin-left:8px; padding: 1px 6px; z-index: 999; /* hints stay above all other elements */ position: absolute; /* allows proper formatting if hint is two lines */ display: none; }
We set display:none because we are only going to show the hints when the user focuses on the input field. We also set our tooltips to default to our red invalid color, because they are always considered invalid until the proper information is entered in.
Using the ::before Selector

Now we want to add a little triangle to our hint boxes that help direct and guide the eye. This can be done using images, but in our case we are going to do it using pure CSS. Because it is purely a presentational element that is not vital to the pages functionality, we are going to add a small triangle that points left using the ::before pseudo selector. We can do this by using one of the unicode geometric shapes.
Normally we would use the HTML Unicode format to display these in our HTML (as shown in the image above). However, because we will be using the ::before CSS selector, we have to use the triangles corresponding escaped unicode when using the content:"" rule. Then we just use positioning to get it where we want it. 001 .form_hint::before {
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002 003 004 005 006 007
content: "\25C0"; /* left point triangle in escaped unicode */ color:#d45252; position: absolute; top:1px; left:-6px; }
Using the + Adjacent Selector

Finally, we are going to use the CSS adjacent selector to show and hide our form field hints. The adjacent selector (x + y) selects the element that is immediately preceded by the former element. Since our field hints come right after our input fields in our HTML, we can use this selector to show/hide the tooltips. 001 002 003
.contact_form input:focus + .form_hint {display: inline;} .contact_form input:required:valid + .form_hint {background: #28921f;} /* change .contact_form input:required:valid + .form_hint::before {color:#28921f;} /* chang
As you can see from the CSS, we also set the form hints to change colors along with the inputs border when a field is valid or invalid.
Step 16: Sit Back and Admire Your Beautiful HTML5 Form
Go ahead and take a look at your final product!
Conclusion
As you can see, the new HTML5 form features are pretty neat! Everything is backwards compatible so incorporating these new features into your website wont break anything. HTML5 validation is coming closer to replacing client-side validation in helping users properly fill out their online forms. However, HTML5 validation still does not replace server-side validation. For the time being, its best to use both methods when handling user-submitted information. Thanks for reading!
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Tags: css3formhtml5validation
By Jim Nielsen
Jim Nielsen considers himself a web designer at heart, though he often dabbles in other areas such as print and identity design. He loves acquiring new knowledge and hopes to someday develop competency in a wide-array of disciplines including programming, mathematics, and even physics!
Note: Want to add some source code? Type <pre><code> before it and </code></pre> after it. Find out more
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Bring Your Forms Up to Date With CSS3 and HTML5 Validation | Webd...

Jim Nielsen on Jan 2nd 2013 with 89 Comments and 51 Reactions

Step 1: Conceptualization Functionality

Step 2: Conceptualization Form

Step 3: HTML Starter Code

002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010

Step 4: HTML Form

Step 5: HTML Form Elements

The Remaining Input Elements

Step 6: Adding the Placeholder Attribute

Quick Tip: Style your placeholder Text

Step 7: Basic CSS

Remove :focus Style

Form Input Elements

Step 8: Add Some Interactivity with CSS3

.contact_form input:focus, .contact_form textarea:focus { /* add this to the alre padding-right:70px;

Step 9: The required Attribute in HTML5

Step 10: Styling required Fields

What happens upon submission?

An Example: The iPhone

Step 12: Changing the type Attributes

Step 13: HTML5 Validation

Email and URL Fields

Step 14: Introducing the HTML5 pattern Attribute

The pattern Attribute

Step 15: Form Field Hints (CSS)

Using the ::before Selector

002 003 004 005 006 007

Using the + Adjacent Selector

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