As we said earlier, usability is extremely important in a flat design. The element that suffers more on the usability front from this style is usually the web form. It is usually so easy to match controls such as buttons and text fields to match the flat styles that they lose the effects and features that make them identifiable. A text field is usually represented by a rectangular box with a subtle inner shadow to show that it is expecting content. This shadow is often lost in flat design, and to avoid this, we need to make sure that a form is identifiable as a form. There are several ways of doing this. The best way to do this is by laying your hands on it, so let's do a simple exercise on web forms usability.

Next, we will create a simple sign-up form for a website. To do this, we will use the ele_winvista_firefox_all.psd file, which is available on the resource pack that accompanies this book. It is also available online at http://designerstoolbox.com/designresources...