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I usually add the clear form button to HTML forms by default, but tonight I had what alcholics call a "moment of clarity". Why the hell do we add this? In all my years of using the internet I have never gotten to the end of the form and thought "crap!, I screwed up, I need to reset this!". Is this button actually necessary or a hold over from another time?

craigmoliver
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    I don't see why this should be closed. In the Old Days, we thought there was an objective reason to have `Submit` and `Reset` buttons in pairs. Now, there are objective reasons why not. This also doesn't require "extended discussion" - so far each answer has stood on its own without the need for comments or discussions. – John Saunders Sep 30 '09 at 22:35

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I stopped adding those about 1997. It really bothers me when I fill out a large form and accidentially hit the Clear button. I am not really sure why they were ever used in the first place. You're right, I don't think I've ever filled out a form and said to myself, "Oh wait a minute, I think I want to start over?"

Brian Behm
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    That was a great year. Remember all the 3D raised borders on HTML tables? – MusiGenesis Sep 30 '09 at 01:48
  • Does the browser's edit->undo work if you clear a form by accident? – Matthew Lock Sep 30 '09 at 02:14
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    what if the form was pre-populated with data? You make a change and then realize you need to revert it back to what it was? – Evernoob Sep 30 '09 at 08:12
  • Good point @Evernoob, @Anthony had about the same comment. That is about the only case that I could really see using it but even then it's all or nothing. If you've made alot of changes and want to undo them all it will work for that but if you've made alot of changes and then accidentally hit the reset instead of submit then you have that "Oh crap!" moment. – Brian Behm Oct 01 '09 at 02:53
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    and ! don't forget ! – maayank Oct 03 '09 at 09:19
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    I can't believe none of you have mentioned that awesome "under construction" gif that was mandatory on all sites that year. – Scott C Wilson Apr 21 '13 at 15:04
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The nice thing about the reset button is that it will repopulate all form elements with their original values, not simply set them to zero or blank. So if the form was generated by server with saved data, the user makes a bunch of changes, and then realizes not only that something is wrong but that they also have no clue what the original value was, reset is VERY handy.

Also it's nice for forms with lots of numerical data, like the timesheet page I'm working on right now. There are potentially 16 fields, all with generic, somewhat meaningless numbers. If the user figures out they were looking at the wrong schedule, it's nice to just nuke it back to what the server loaded.

Having said all of that, my page does NOT include a reset button, simply because I didn't want to leave open the exact opposite of awesome it presents, which is "and I'll just click this button to save...oh shit."

What I do instead is any field can be set to 0, but any non-valid data (non-numeric, less than 0, greater than 16) will revert back to the value last entered (which is stored via js). Doesn't offer the grand sweep, but it at least lowers the amount of possible data entry errors and keeps the user from losing data over a simple mistake.

456 has a great article and link on this topic, by the way.

Anthony
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    **Pressing ESC on single fields resets just that field to its default value.** (maybe not in all browsers?) But how many users actually know this? Probably not many--keyboard shortcuts aren't terribly obvious. However, the idea of being able to reset *individual* fields is useful. – Kimball Robinson Apr 06 '10 at 20:40
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No, we don't need it. I usually just hit the Refresh button.

And then remember it's a @$#$@# Flash website.

MusiGenesis
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    I thought most browsers keep the data in forms when you refresh. Firefox and Chrome do, anyway. – DisgruntledGoat Oct 06 '09 at 17:12
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    But not in a Flash website. :P – Pekka Mar 27 '10 at 17:36
  • No. Unfortunately, reloading the page will (at least in Firefox) restore the values you've typed in the form fields instead of resetting them. Sending a new GET request instead of repeating the previous request (Alt + D, Return instead of F5) usually works though (usually if the previous request was GET). – basic6 May 10 '14 at 19:45
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In what situation would you enter totally wrong information for 10+ fields before realizing it? And then, how much time does it save to clear them before starting over instead of just changing each value? It's adding a major UI element that is not only completely useless, but dangerous for 99.99% of your users so the remaining .01% saves maybe 1 second of their time.

Rex M
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    You've obviously never sat down with end users before. – NotMe Oct 01 '09 at 16:54
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    @Chris I have, and the huge amount of frustration caused by an accidental clicking "reset" has *always* been much greater than the occasional need to actually reset a form. I'm fine with a "start over" button somewhere, but the usual "submit / reset" button layout is humbug and dangerous. – Pekka Mar 27 '10 at 17:38
  • @Pekka: I'll grant you it may be frustrating to accidentally click on the wrong button; but that's a far cry from being dangerous. – NotMe Mar 28 '10 at 18:18
  • @Chris if you have spent half an hour filling out a form, the prospect of losing the entered data because of a click on the wrong button *is* dangerous IMO. – Pekka Mar 28 '10 at 18:20
  • @Chris and totally by accident, I just stumbled upon some theory I think underlines the point: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/03/the-opposite-of-fitts-law.html – Pekka Mar 28 '10 at 19:24
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    @Chris standard UI design - anything which destroys user data with no undo is dangerous, and must have the *strongest* justification for being present. – Rex M Mar 28 '10 at 23:10
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What about one day you need to use it ?

Tarik
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I guess nowadays maybe there are some issues with browsers autofilling forms for you with irrelevant information that people might want to clear.

Colin Coghill
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Hmm, maybe your average IE and Firefox users may not be aware that there is a supposed "feature" called autocomplete that these browsers offer by default.

Maybe the "clear form" button is commonly provided for forms due to the chance the user has not unchecked the Remember search forms and history and the Form & Search History checkboxes, and will otherwise be confused and try to manually delete form fields...

EDIT --

And apparently there is a non-W3C-standard attribute autocomplete that can be added to input fields of a form and set to "off." There may be problems with this though, check out this stackoverflow question about it.

Community
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Ian Campbell
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  • what? lol... the "Clear" button has been around since before you were born. It's really ridiculous. :-) – craigmoliver Jun 29 '12 at 02:02
  • Haha, ok I dunno. A "clear" button does seem to clear radio-button input fields, however, which could be useful (but could be done in the background without a button). Someone else is asking the same question as you here: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/10314.htm. – Ian Campbell Jun 29 '12 at 20:53
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Just a thought to the people who can't think of any reason to have a reset form button! We have a search form at the top of our results pages, which is pre-filled with the search criteria from the previous search. Without a reset form button, the user has to either go back to the previous page, or manually clear all the form fields to do a new search. Why pre-fill the search form? So the user can keep the rest of their search parameters the same and change the location they're searching in, for example.

Edit: I just found out the reset button returns all form values to their original values. So, I'm talking more about a "clear all fields" button really.

evilunix
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I think instead of clearing the whole form, selecting some of them and pressing clear button would be something users would want more.

Tarik
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Anthony's example seems to be the only valid reason why we would add a "clear" button on forms now-a-days. It only seems relevant within a web application of some sort. I don't think general single-direction-forms will benefit much, such as collecting personal information. I couldn't tell you the the last... or for that matter, the first time I ever used a "clear" button as a USER. I can certainly give examples to when I used it as a developer, but that was before Firefox became so awesome!

So; in the end... I think it's more traditional than functional. Unless you've got a complex web application, I see no need for this extra functionality.

FergatROn
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I often have a select box that has an "add new >>" option, whereupon the select field morphs into a text field to allow users to add new values to the field on-the-fly. I put a reset button so they can get the regular select box back.

In order to avoid the usability issue of accidentally clicking reset when they meant to click submit I put it some distance away from submit and have it in a neutral tone while the submit button is an accented color (sorta like OS X, it's got the glowing blue button and then the grey ones.)

However, I still don't really like it. I've been exploring a reset button of some sort on each select box that morphs so they can just reset that one piece.

Ryan Florence
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Good question! I mostly add a clear button when i remember it, but i don't really think its a must have. So if i forget it i just leave it without one..

And i don't think i ever used a clear button myself.. xD

Fogh
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