What's the best way to highlight a required field on a web form?

Question

I don\'t find the oft-used \"*\" to be very nice looking - can anyone suggest a nicer-looking method or point me to an example?

I tried making the field highlighted

Answer 1

I've found the answers on LukeW.com to be the most useful. because there isn't a simple solution here. It depends on what percentage of the fields are required, how many fields are in your form, and how long your labels are. For the vast majority of the web, people understand bold to be required, and normal-weight to be optional (if any options are bolded). Only after form validation fails would I present the user with the required-yet-skipped input boxes highlighted.