[nraynaud]

One thing I did on my website was being quite lenient in what I accepted and then re-formulating what I understood to the user http://i.imgur.com/NiPtDEX.png I'm still not sure it's a good idea since I've never seen it anywhere else.

[Ziomislaw]

This is an amazing idea, thanks. It is also one of the best ways to check if you are being understood IRL - just ask your interlocutor to explain in his/her words what you just told.

I've seen something similar (well, now I know it's simmilar, it didn't occur to me until I saw your example) - though I assumed it would be unhandy. It was a way to show your webshop cart as a text saying something like: You have bought X, We will send it to (Addres here). It should arrive @ (date). Will cost (some)$. (it didn't look as awkward as my example though).

[nraynaud]

frankly I haven't done any research into that (the way to present it or the effectiveness of the idea), I might have found the idea somewhere else, like in the "About Face" book or in one of D.Norman's books, but I don't remember. I strongly believe in showing the future in users before they click. They are afraid to click and explore, that way they know what to expect. It's the same with the date field, you can type a lot of stuff in it and it will tell you what it decides to understand: the first letters of "Today", "Yesterday", a number will be understood as the last day with this number(this month or last month), a full date, etc.