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Fill-out Forms

The HTML forms feature provides for fill-out forms to allow controlled input from users to be processed in a configurable manner. Forms were introduced in the X Window version of Mosaic and were originally described in a document written by the developers of Mosaic. Forms were subsequently included in the HTML 2.0 draft specification as a level 2 feature. Historically not all browsers supported forms, but the situation is changing rapidly and all recent browsers have the facility as standard.

Setting up a form involves writing the HTML that describes the form and also setting up the software on the server machine to process the data. The browser displays the form and allows the user to input information. When the user submits the form, the data entered is sent to the server, which passes it to the processing software.

It is pointless to set up a fill-out form unless you have the authority to configure the server to deal with the resulting incoming data. Configuring a server to execute scripts to process data received through forms is covered in Chapter , and writing the scripts in Chapter .

• The FORM element
• Defining fields
  • Single-line text fields
  • Multiple-line text fields
  • Password fields
  • Hidden fields
  • Radio buttons
  • Check boxes
  • Selection fields
  • Reset buttons
  • Submit buttons
  • Image buttons
• Limitations of forms

Spinning the Web by Andrew Ford
© 1995 International Thomson Publishing
© 2002 Andrew Ford and Ford & Mason Ltd
Note: this HTML document was generated in December 1994 directly from the LaTeX source files using LaTeX2HTML. It was formatted into our standard page layout using the Template Toolkit. The document is mainly of historical interest as obviously many of the sites mentioned have long since disappeared.