PUBLIC MARKS from greut with tags design & form

A recent lengthy discussion in the Interaction Design Association focused on the placement of actions in Web forms that span several Web pages. The quintessential question underlying this debate is: can an action which leads people to the previous step of a process be placed to the right of an action that leads users to the next step of a process?

yet another great article.

Forms that are laid out vertically with the prompts to the left of the form control have the advantage that the user can quickly scan down the left-hand side to determine what type of information they are required to provide. This is generally the best approach, although not always practical. For example, in languages such as German (emphasis added) where some words are a lot longer than others, it can create a situation where some prompts may be a long way from their associated form control, which obviously has an impact on usability. In these circumstances, positioning the prompt above the form control may be more appropriate.

bloddy German

“Excessive distances between some labels and their input fields forced users unnecessarily to take more time to interact visually with the form.”

how form layout performs.