merge or clarify difference with shortform

One immediate difference is that this module actually has a release out :)

Thanks for notifying me. The other module is not released yet, hence I didn't notice it when releasing this one (is there an overview page like http://drupal.org/project/Modules/name that includes non-released projects?).

The main idea is very similar, to display the field labels on top of the actual field.

From a quick glance at their code, I believe the features and technical approaches are somewhat different. Compact forms overlay the labels over the field using display: absolute; while simpleform removes the label with hook_form_alter and sets the field's value to the label text. I guess this makes compact forms more accessible and simpleform more true to the intendeded visual look with js turned off.

I'll try to find some time to try out simpleform and see how it works.

There should not be duplicate modules in the repositiory obviously. If the approaches are very different however, doesn't it make sense to keep them as separate projects rather merging them into a large blob of stuff with tons of options?

If anyone else have opionions on the matter, please comment.

I have tried out both modules and they do appear to work in slightly different ways (see tomsun's comment above).

Overall, I prefer Compact Forms due to the way it handles the input labels (accessibility is always a good thing). It has nice, simple options that remove the aasterisk and the colon, leaving neat text that goes into the input field. Shortforms, does a rather poor job of this, giving you things like Username (*) for the login block. It also has added inline CSS to hide the old labels.

At first I kind of liked the way Shortforms created a second block for you, but after a bit more playing around, I don't really like that option anymore. Its pretty much just creating extra guff that isn't really needed in the site. Compact Forms simply works with the current form without any duplication.

Compact Forms also degrades better when javascript is turned off. Shortforms leaves a bit of CSS active that messes up the labels positioning. Yes, you can edit the CSS yourself, but you shouldn't need to.

That said, I do like the way that Shortforms collects form ids.

So my suggestion is this: allow Compact Forms to use Form Store output (or use the code in Shortforms to do it) and then you won't need Shortforms anymore. I realize Shortforms was the first kid on the block, but Compact Forms just seems to be a more elegant way of doing things.

Just my $0.02.

Shortform has been marked as abandoned.