Website Design and Programming - Introduction to Web Forms



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There is practically no website without at least a form in one of its pages. Forms are useful to collect data from the website visitors and users. Once the user submits the form to the server, a form processing script must get the form data, validate that the user input matches the expected format for each field (e.g: email address field must be a string of text with the format of a valid email address) and process this information as desired. The script may save it into a database, send it by email or just do some processing with it and display the result. Validating the user input is essential to prevent malicious users from damaging your site.

A form definition in html starts with the form tag and ends with the /form tag. This tag can have several attributes like method (GET or POST), and action (the url of the form processing script). If use the GET method, the form data is encoded in the action URL. This method is recommended when the form is a query form. With the POST method, the form data is to appear within a message body. This is the recommended method when the form will be used to update a database, or send email, or make any action other than just retrieve data.

The form fields are used to collect the data. Generally a label is placed by each field, so the user knows what data to input. There are different kind of fields, among them:

· Textboxes

· Textareas

· Drop-downs

· Multi select

· File

· Radio buttons

· Checkboxes

· Buttons

· Hidden

The hidden fields are used to send some data that the user does not need to see, along with the form. An example of this could be a form number, so the form processing script identifies which form has been submitted.

The File field allows users to upload a file. The form processing script will get the file together with the rest of the form data. For this field to work properly, you need to include this attribute in the tag: enctype='multipart/form-data'.

Buttons are used to submit or reset the form.

Refer to an HTML guide for full description on the attributes and syntax of each tag. You may find a guide at http://www.w3schools.com/tags/default.asp or at http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/ among many other sites.

When the form is complex, it is useful to group fields in areas using the fieldset tag. Just place the fieldset tag, then optionally a legend Section Name /legend tag, then all the pertinent form fields, and the /fieldset tag after them.

It is possible to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) or inline styles to change the look of the form controls.

You can bring your forms to a different level by combining them with the usage of scripting language like JavaScript. You can make the form react immediately to certain events, like the user clicking on a control, or a field changing its value. You can highlight the field that has the focus, for example. Or count how many characters have been entered in a text box or a textarea. You can make calculations and display the results automatically. The possibilities are endless.




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Okay, one of the reasons why posting has been light on this blog is because we have been busy. My wife and I have also had our first child (well, two years ago) and to be honest, our work has become less innovative in terms of doing cool new things and more iterative, as in we have been applying a lot of the cool things we learned and developed over the last few years.

This happened because we changed our business model from agency style to "plug us into your operations and we will be your dev crew" style.

Anyways, every once in a while we like to take stock and see where we may be able to gain some time so as to try and work in our next direction or new model, whatever that may be. The applications that we use are often places where we can find cool new stuff and gain time.

What things have you done to find extra time? Please, share below!

Here are three things that, in the last year point five have helped us find some extra time.

  1. Navicat: we moved all of the bits of PHPmyAdmin accesses over to navicat at about the end of 2007 and this was an excellent move. Tonnes of time gained.
  2. TeamViewer: for quick support and desktop sharing with remote staff.
  3. Buying a netbook and using Maxivista and Ultramon: adds two new monitors to my existing setup. I now have a 4 monitor two computer setup which allows me to not only have two more monitors but I can also have open two versions of many of the apps that I use (useful for multitasking with teams etc.)
  4. Moving simpler client sites to WordPress: now that it has one step upgrades and almost doesn't require the use of an FTP client to get up and running on some hosts.
  5. Dictation Software: I have been using Dragon Naturally Speaking for writing some course and blog materiel lately (pre-writing for my new blog). I find this is saving me a load of time and I am getting more written then ever before.

So what solution have you implemented lately to buy you some extra time?



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