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General Discussion

Nick Pettit
STAFF
Nick Pettit
Treehouse Teacher

Forum Contest: Design a Contact Form

EDIT: This contest has ended! Congratulations to Geert-Jan Hendriks for his winning entry! Our next contest is all about creating a toggle switch.

Hi everybody,

It's time for a new Treehouse Forum contest! First, watch this video to learn more:

After you've watched the video, please read the details below carefully. I'm looking forward to your entries!

How to Enter: Create your contact form entry as a "pen" on Codepen.io and then post the link to your pen as an answer to this post. Your contact form should include the following:

  • Name field
  • Email field
  • Message field
  • Submit button

Due Date: All entries must be submitted by April 20th at 11:45pm ET. Here's a timezone chart so you can see what time that is for your locale.

Prize: The entries will be judged by Treehouse teachers based on both design and originality. One winner will receive a free month of Treehouse Pro on us! :) We'll announce the winner on April 21st and reveal the next contest.

I looked at some entry and I decided that I should learn more before coming into this kind of challenge lol.

Tears in my eyes...realizing I'm still a beginner. Snif

I am going to add my two cents and post my form. I am impressed with others have done and will use their design as a guide. http://codepen.io/makguy/pen/oCjrf

I never received that much notifications before from treehouse this is a highly rated competition

Really psyched! This is the first time doing anything on a text editor and codepen! Thanks for the opportunity to showcase what I have learned so far! http://codepen.io/gebruteame/pen/elqIf

Here the final product, goes through from research, reference, modifying and design. No matter win or lose, I have learned a lot of things through this forum contest. & appreciate all other participant's design, once you had paid so much effort on your project, you're already is a winner =)! This is the Fullscreen and the code

113 Answers

Which browsers should participants support (or is that being too specific)?

Nick Pettit
Nick Pettit
Treehouse Teacher

Whichever browsers you think you should support for making websites. :)

When we narrow down the entries to a few finalists, we generally will check in several browsers, so be ready.

why someone with 8 millions points like you Rhys Yorke should compete with us beginners . Not fair Nick Pettit . this is a beginner competition we should have restrictions otherwise we won't win ever .

Points doesn't mean you are the best. Also your only as good as your competition so you should feel inspired by some of the better designs. Take my entry way down this list, no where near the best but I have a lot of points. Also it does not say this is a beginners contest, it is a contest for Treehouse members. I think the best practise here is to focus on your entry and treat these contests as a learning experience. Rhys can't be awesome at everything so maybe a contest will come up that favours your skill set. We are all hear to learn from Treehouse and equally each other :)

Actually Adam, I AM awesome at everything.

No one should be discouraged at all from entering the contest based on its participants. I won't be participating in this competition - I just wanted to ask Nick for some clarification on behalf of the participants.

But as Adam Sackfield mentioned, points are earned by successfully completing the Treehouse courses, and helping out on the forums, etc - so in no way is it an indication of someone's level of ability.

I'm looking forward to seeing what members come up with!

Lol I won't either...

I will practice more I'm learning fro what people are posting anyway

Hahaha :) My bad Rhys Yorke. You are the chosen one ;)

I am gonna win this. Hahaha

classic :)

Here's my entry: Fullscreen & Code.

This is really nice! I like how you’ve used jQuery to validate the from and display the senders name in a success message. This is a really nice subtle touch. Great job!

I realy like your entry. Good job, Charlie! :)

Cool! Looks like we have a winner :) Congrats Charlie! :)

Wow Charlie. My compliments!

Wow Charlie that is some nice work

This is froggin cool :D

Very cool. Looks awesome in Firefox. However, in Chrome and Chromium I'm getting some bizarre input layouts. Solid design.

Thanks, Lyle :)

I use chrome myself (the newest version), but everything looks just fine :)

Nice design, but i find it very harsh on the eyes to look at, maybe you should make the text black instead of green and darken the other colors

I LOVE the inspiration. The text is monster difficult to read. A bit more contrast, and we may have a winner.

This is my entry. First Contact Form ever, took me a lot of hours but i also learned a lot while doing this!. Full Screen and Code

Looks really good, Luke. Only critique is that I'd like to send the android a longer message. ;)

He doesn't like too long messages ;)

LOL... I almost don't wanna enter this is so good.

Thank You guys, it means a lot to me :)

this is brilliant!!

Awesome all around: It is easy to read (i.e. lot's of contrast), it is original, it is consistent, and it uses humor.

Hello, this is my first post :)

Here's my entry Full Screen & Code

I just love your form! Great design!

Thank you, sir. :)

Very Nice Sliding effect. Sets a calming mood paired with that background.

That was the main idea behind the design :)

Hello, never had so much fun making a web form. Inspired from TeamTreehouse's colors, here it is. Full: http://cdpn.io/gqKiL Pen: http://codepen.io/AlexKvazos/pen/gqKiL/

Add more bottom margins to the labels please <3 Besides that its BEAutiful! :)

Great "Mobile First" type design.

Hello, Can I Create A Contact Form Just In Html And CSS.?

Hey :)

I created mine only using HTML and CSS :)

Thanks :)

This is my entry Fullscreen and Code.

It's my first entry to a forum contest!

That's really creative!

Nice idea of putting on a postcard! Like it a lot!

I love it. Just set outline: none to get rid of that pesky outline which interferes with the feel of the form. Just a suggestion.

Great idea...love this.

Creative, simple, and consistent. How does it look on a phone?

I really like the post card design

Here's a the pen and the Fullscreen : )

Thanks for the fun challenge!

Hey guys, cool challenge.

Here's my fullscreen form

Looking forward to see the winner!

Nice challenge, thanks Treehouse. Here is my entry, it's working (colors are changing) co try it out :) Code: http://cdpn.io/kmgBF Fullscreen: http://codepen.io/d3v3r0/full/kmgBF/

Pretty cool!

This is my first contest ever! So excited! Here are my Fullscreen and Code :)

Very nice

I opted for a simple contact form. Here is my entry fullscreen and code

Classy look!

This is nice and clean. Great job!

Thanks. This is first time I've coded something meaningful.

Set a max-width: 100%; for the textarea because you can resize it endlessly. Or just disable it.

Thanks for pointing that out Alexandro. I've fixed it now :)

This is my first contest also, media queries included http://codepen.io/dsashun/pen/tEmaK/

Finally my first project! Here's the fullscreen. Tried some media queries also!

This was a fun little project. Here’s my entry: full screen and the code

Awesome!!

love it!

ohh just to point it out you've made a little mistake you wrote " from " instead of " form " at the bottom in copyright

Peter Hearne Thanks for pointing that out! Don’t know how I missed it, but it’s been corrected. :)

This one is great! Like it a lot.

This was fun, I was just coding my future website and cut out the contact section. Am I glad I decided to do this site in interchangeable, responsive code-blocks:

http://dropixels.eu/treehouse/cform/

here's mine :) :: Full Page and the code

That's beautiful!

My first ever forum contest..Here is my Fullscreen and Code

not bad, but id lose the comic sans, its a big no no

Very nice sir! But he's right, if you saw Treehouse's jokes on facebook about comic sans you would know better ;)

error

here is mine :) http://cdpn.io/uzKwJ

Updated entry added a little more styling but I am not design, just floating the concept of the hints at the top. Not even uses full validations here

Charlie your is not good , compared to others, but I believe you made it in purpose

ok so after fixing my heading here is my fullsize page contact form :) http://codepen.io/justpete/full/JzcdF

My first form: Fullscreen Pen

For some reason, my input fonts aren't right. (Pen newbie here)

ok....hands at work!!

My PEN. I'm going to clean up the code. I know I'm not gonna win I just want criticism lol.

Nick saying "purely design-based" made me neglect anything like accessibility or fear of divitis. I would love to see a forum challenge demanding some kind of accessible rich web app sometime!

However, here you are:

  • Full
  • Pen Beware of Comments in CSS

Awesome!

People say I have an odd sense of humor. Oh, well, maybe someone else will get a giggle.

Pen & Full Screen

Hope you enjoy the Full Screen & PEN! "She's got them blue jeans!" (Country song going through my head when I saw this contest).....decided to just go with it.

Amazing

I just signed up for CodePen and wasn't sure how to use it so I just put all my CSS files on top of each other.

Fullscreen: http://codepen.io/ashlynnpai/full/hiLBK

Code: http://codepen.io/ashlynnpai/pen/hiLBK

IP attributions are on the CodePen Details & Comments.

Edited: image seems to be showing properly now

That's great! Earthlings do like forms!

Here's mine! I used Chalker's email validation plugin and Font Awesome to spice it up. Full screen and code

This is mine, hope you like it :) full screen and pen

favorite so far.

thank you Robert Russell

Yet another entry. Simple one: full screen and some lines

Here's my first-ever contest entry!
My design in full screen. And my work.

I hope my design isn't too "blingy" for this contest. I wanted to make a contact form anyways for the kayaking company that I work for, so this contest is perfect motivation to get a start on it. Healthy criticism wanted-- thanks :)

My entry: Fullscreen & Code

Your links are broken Sir.

You'll need to fix the "]" part in your markdown for them to work.

They work for me :)

Very nice work Samuel Lopez ...if you want you can add the email field as required!

Thanks Jean Paiva! I believe I have the email field.

Heres my entry: Code Fullscreen

I had some trouble getting the icons to show before the placeholders. It worked in chrome with the

::-webkit-input-placeholder{padding:20px}

and it succesfully moved the placeholder text over 20px for the icons to fit nicely. The corresponding

::-moz-placeholder{padding: 20px}

did nothing and I went crazy trying to fix it. Ended up settling for just moving the icons to the end of the placeholders.

Any insights on that would be appreciated.

I couldn't figure it out... You could however add a few spaces before your placeholder

placeholder="    Name"

That's all I could come up with

Edit: Was meant to be a reply to Shiraj Ganguly

Thats a pretty good workaround, It just gets to me when stuff that should work doesn't and I cant figure out why. Thanks!

I like the coding theme!

nice!

whoops, delete this

Updated my entry hope you guys like it http://dreamcpu.com/ContactForm.html

Here is my code and this is the full page. I use a small bit of jquery to make the message field interactive

I like the expandable message field. (I haven't learned that stuff yet, but it looks exciting.)

I just use jquery to change the class of the text area when the user is focused in on it and use the css transition property for the animation

nice

My go at it. Hope ya'll like.

http://codepen.io/NoodlePuter/full/yKiEx

Love how when you watch the videos it seems relatively easy, and when you have a go at it, you wanna split your hairs. None the less great practice. Thanks Treehouse for doing these contest!

Very creative and inspirational.

Thank you Michael Ferreras ! means a lot

You have a really nice eye for design!

It looks good, but You need to work on functionality.

This one is very nice! I like it.

wow this is beautiful

Nice desgin, but the input text seems to be set to white and therefore a user cannot see what they are typing :)

Beautiful.

Thanks guys for the wonderful comments. I really do appreciate them!

Adam Sackfield ah thank you for catching up! Went ahead and changed that haha

Super, loving it.

nvm

Nice work! This is my first contest to. I created an under-the-ocean form, made some fish in Adobe illustrator and did the validation with jQuery...

fullscreen and the pen

Nice work :)

OOooooooooh!!! I want to just watch the fish swim by all day. It is typically impossible to incorporate "techie" stuff without it being garish or a distraction. This fits in perfectly.

Thanks John :)

Excellent.

And this is mine ;) C'mon people!!! Enlist!!!! :P Fullscreen and by the way the Pen

I love everything about the contact form itself. The text is perfect. The usage of space is perfect. The font is perfect. Everything is genuine.

I hate the fact that I had to discover clicking on "NOW!!!" before finding the form (and yes, I know that it is the only obvious thing that one can do ... I still hate it). Is there any way that this could be changed to "contact us" or "CONTACT!!!" or something of that ilk?

Yeah I thought that could be an UX issue. So, I'd solved it, thx for suggestion John

Hi, here is my contest entry: Codepen

Great entry. Very Minecraft. I love how this is simple in form without being simplistic or boring. The rounded inputs with shadowing is a good example.Good use of contrast on the letters too.

Thank you. I'm glad you like it.

Hey everybody. So I really wanted to have some fun with this contest since there's already a ton of great developers doing cool contact forms, so probably not much of a chance of me winning. So I created a contact form for my favorite Marvel Superhero's; The X-MEN!!! FYI: Days of Future Past looks soo sick! Definitly did learn a bunch while doing this. Enjoy it. And here's the link to Days of Future Past: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsjtg7m1MMM

http://codepen.io/Petarg/pen/vILhJ

I'm excited for Days of future past too. Shameless plug here but I did an illustration for DOFP a few months back, kind of a tribute to the 70's style posters that are going around. If you're interested...

Here's mine http://www.kryptonite-dove.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/sentinel-screen.png

You can see the original here http://www.aceshowbiz.com/images/still/days-of-future-past-poster02.jpg

Dude that's soo cool. Now I'm thinking I should done a contact form the Sentenials. :)

Here's my contribution :-) Wanted to get some kind of Tim Burton vibe to it! Enjoy! And have an awesome day! :-)

Full: http://codepen.io/EmilWallgren/full/hoqbC Code: http://codepen.io/EmilWallgren/pen/hoqbC

I decided to go with the classic form look. Few nice features though: mobile-ready, minimalistic design, and validation. Try submitting it! Full screen and Code.

Well executed, and the little icons for the name and email save it from being too generic. They are also functional in that they remind the user what the information is after the user has typed something in.

The highlighting of the submit button is a bit too subtle for me. This can be a preference thing, or it may be specific to your design, so I'd say that if it works for you, leave it as it is.

Thanks John Coffin, I will be making a couple of changes over the next days though, seeing that a lot of people are posting really good designs. Looking forward to see who wins!

Hi everybody, Here is my contact form. Hope you love it!

Really nicely done. Simple (which is good) but not without some nice touches. In particular, I like the rounded corners and the information bubbles (probably not the correct technical term) that pop up around the contact form as someone hovers over the different sections. I also like the fact that the submit button glows when you hover over it.

I agree w/ John! Nice work.

Thank you, John and Becky!

A few minor changes. This isn(n't even) my final form: fullscreen

Sweet rotate on submit, like your style Brandon Frederickson

Ahahahaha! I love it!

Hi Friends, Here is my entry for my first ever contest.Tried to keep it simple.Hope its a good one :-) Full Screen: http://codepen.io/syanshammi/full/uKIye and Code: http://codepen.io/syanshammi/pen/uKIye

Updated my entry hope you guys like it http://dreamcpu.com/ContactForm.html

After a lot of blood sweat and tears ... mostly tears, here's the Fullscreen and Code ... It's a little bit messy but at least its responsive :) *The fonts only work in Chrome for some reason

Very nice

Like it a lot good work!

Thanks a lot :)

Lots of fun, learned a lot. Fullscreen and Code

You really make this fun!

Thanks Ilma! I was admiring your hovering effects. I really like it.

First thing i ever coded all by myself. I know it doesn't stand a chance to all the other fancy designs i've seen, but here it is. :) http://codepen.io/anon/pen/Hjcdf/?editors=110

Its a really simple form.

Full page: http://cdpn.io/uFCzI code: http://codepen.io/elledavid/pen/uFCzI/

This is amazing!

try fixing font-family: on <textarea>. looks awesome!

Pops! love the colors

thanks you guys! Robert Russell I added the style for the font so if the font was changing in different states, it should be fixed now.

Justin Whedon
Justin Whedon
20,953 Points

I've been busy and don't have time to do this, but one of the cooler site contact form's I've done lately is this one... http://previewhq.com/jeanie/#section-four

Redid mine. Well after long hour's, and many cups of iced tea, I got it to work(with pure css). Fullscreen and the pen. courtesy of the :valid pseudo element. This is my first contest. I realize it would probably be better to make it a visible one but this... this got mo' swag.

I'm a little late to the party but here is my submission Fullscreen and Pen.

I've always seen forms as a bit of a chore and not much of a design challenge so wanted to give something different a try. I've attempted to pull together everything I have learned here, hope you guys enjoy it!

Don't forget to submit a valid form if you need to use the district line ;) please mind the gap!

That's very creative.

love it, the background is great!

Here's mine.

My entry http://codepen.io/kyngsteev/full/abyek. Thanks for the opportunity.

Full Page and Code. I made myself chuckle with this one. For some reason firefox won't use the embedded fonts.

Bahaha! I KNEW there was more bureaucracy to getting those beacons lit! Nice.

Ha! whoever put that font ('elvish ring') together has too much time on their hands.

My Entry: Full Page and Code. I hope you like it.

Such contact. So form. Very design WOWWW

Here's my go, I like pop-up stuff, so press the button.

full: http://codepen.io/robdoesweb/full/xbueq code: http://codepen.io/robdoesweb/pen/xbueq

Hey there, here's my entry: Pen, Full Page. This is my first time ever :)

Mateusz Szymanski I edited your post to add correct Markdown as your link was not showing. If you now click edit you can see how to add links to the forum :)

Another entry this time with a little design here

Simple and responsive with a couple subtle homages to Treehouse. Code | Fullscreen

This will be my first forum contest entry ever Fullscreen- http://codepen.io/beowulf/full/nACKo Hope you guys like it any constructive feedback will be appreciated thank you.

My fist forum contest. Went with a minimalist flat UI. Lmk what yall think. http://codepen.io/colinbarrettdesign/full/ElpdB/

Hi guys!

This is my first forum contest! :D Here's my entry: Full: http://codepen.io/DenkSchuldt/full/vasDq Code: http://codepen.io/DenkSchuldt/pen/vasDq

Regards! D.

Here is mine,

It is not responsive because I am not up to that bit of the track yet.

http://codepen.io/tomlawrenceuk/full/fpBIy

http://cdpn.io/fpBIy

Hope you like.

Fun contest! Here is my Full Page and Code entry. Cheers!

Love the contest!

Here is my Full Page and Code!

Thanks!

Here's mine: Fullscreen - Code

My first entry to a forum contest! There are a lot of things I want to do with it still, but I wanted to prove to myself that I can actually code something and start using what I've learned on treehouse so far :-) fullscreen and code

Any feedback is more than welcomed!

Hey you guys, I joined Treehouse last week and been enjoying it so far.

Here's my Fullscreen and Code

Here is my entry. Fullscreen and pen.

nice

Like it, good stuff.

Hello everyone ! Thanks TreeHouse for that neat little contest, very enjoyable. It's not perfect yet, but I spent way more time than I expected aleady, so here it is: FullScreen / Code

It should be compatible with most modern browsers and screen sizes.

I liked. It's beautiful and clean.

Here is my entry! FullScreen / Code

My entry: Fullscreen and Code

This was a lot of fun. Here are links to the Fullscreen and the Code.

It was also frustratingly challenging for such a "simple" task. If anyone want an education in what they know and what they don't, you still have a few hours.

Here the final product, goes through from research, reference, modifying and design. No matter win or lose, I have learned a lot of things through this forum contest. & appreciate all other participant's design, once you had paid so much effort on your project, you're already is a winner =)! This is the Fullscreen and the code

Kenny G = instant win. Awesome.

haha, i m a fans of him. =)

Here is my entry in Code and Full Page

Good job Friz, its awesome! :)

Thanks! :)

Thanks Chwan :)

ooppss sorry

heres the full and heres the code. Its no where near as good as half of the forms on here. But i may as well give it a go :D

although now i've noticed I'm quite possibly late in getting my entry in :S got lost in the moment :S

Ok here's my shot. Damn form elements are hard to wrangle! full and code

Cool! :D

Nice one!

Hey guys. That was a nice project, I'm happy with results. Good luck to everyone.

Here is my entry Code

Nice animations and transitions!

Hello!

This is the first Forum Contest I've taken part in. What a fun challenge - there are some really incredible entries!

I decided to test out my brand-new adobe illustrator/media query skills on this one too. Here's the code and the fullscreen version.

Here's mine. Spent a few days writing out the php before I realized it was purely a design challenge -__-. Lot's of fun, regardless!

Here's my submission.

Really crisply styled, but the textarea has collapsed in my browser (safari 7) - just shows up as a horizontal line... Looks great in Chrome though. No idea whats up with that :)

I really have huge doubts about what I built here, there is definitely a room for a lot of improvements...but, how will I improve without participating in such contests, right? here is my participation: http://codepen.io/anon/pen/vHIuc/

Here you go: fullscreen and code

This is actually my first time coding anything original since starting Treehouse. I had a late start on this and it was a bit difficult at first since my original idea required me to know Javascript (which I haven't gone through yet) but I have to say I'm happy with the way it turned out :)

Seriously good job!

Thanks! :D

Here's mine. And here's the full page preview. Hope y'all like it. ^^

Here's my go at it. Hope ya like (:

Code & full page view

I would like to see it, but actually my internet isn't working very well. =/

Nice - the overlapping circles are a nice touch. Good way of highlighting the focus on the form too; I tried by changing the background colour, but that seems to break in old ie. This would be a lot more durable in bad browsers!

Nick Pettit
STAFF
Nick Pettit
Treehouse Teacher

Wow! I cannot believe how many entries this contest received. You all did an amazing job putting together these great entries. :)

This week's winner is Geert-Jan Hendriks! His contact form is very easy to scan and understand, makes good use of contrast and complementary colors, and has some great illustrations. The animations are also really nice.

This is mostly meant to be a design contest, but I also appreciate that Geert-Jan used the label element for each form field. This is a pretty important feature for accessibility and a lot of forms on the web these days are neglecting to use label elements in favor of the placeholder attribute. The W3C explicitly says "The placeholder attribute should not be used as a replacement for a label."

Congrats to Geert-Jan! Great stuff.

Here's the link to the next forum contest.

Congrats Geert-Jan, love those error octopus! octopus

Congratulations !

Very well done

Congratulations! Your form was amazing!

Congratulations, well designed and executed :)

That was my favorite too!

Thanks everybody! I never expected to win, there where so many great creative contact forms! This is awesome :)

Congrats! ^.^/ Loved your animation and illustrations!

Congratulations!

Nice job, Geert-Jan!

Congratulations! Great form! :-)

Congrates :)