Boxes & Arrows has a great article on the Principles of Task Flow for Web Applications which explains the concept of views and forms.
A ‘view’ shows the user data (such a list of contacts). A ‘form’ enables the user to edit said data. The only way into a form is from a view, and the only way out of a form is to hit Submit or Cancel (both of which lead back to the view). Given the hyperlink nature of the Web, the last point is very important: it prevents users from making changes in text boxes only to navigate somewhere else before pressing submit.
All the cool kids are doing it, so why not me. Go and buy Zeldman’s Designing with Web Standards, or better still get your employers to buy it for the technical library (you do have one, right?). Tell them it’ll speed up production, eliminate Netscape nightmares, decrease bandwidth requirements, future proof builds, increase drinking capacity and get you laid. (We made up some of those).
Web standards · Information design
