Ask HN: Why do modern web forms not have input labels?

2 pointsmeagher4 comments

Go to most websites and their forms do not have labels anymore! The placeholder text is the only indication what you're supposed to put in the field.

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Uses less space on the site, and it's much more cleaner that way. Much more customisable I guess.

I agree that it's cleaner, but it's not particularly good for usability. Placeholder text is usually a light color and screen readers have no clue what's going on.

Can you give me an example of a site like this?

* GitHub's signup on home page (https://github.com/)

* Stripe's login page (https://dashboard.stripe.com/login)

* DigitalOcean's login page (https://cloud.digitalocean.com/login)

* Many, many more

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