Simple Forms
Creating A Simple Form - Client Side
First, there are two kinds of forms - client side and
server side. Or, in plain English, one type is run on the
visitor's computer, the other is run on the website's
computer. Since all but one area is exactly the same, we'll
cover form basics here and just the specifics to server side
forms on the next page.
Start a new HTML document and call it
"test6.htm". Get the page started -
<HEAD>
<TITLE>My First Form</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
Now, let the browser know that you are starting a form -
<FORM METHOD=POST>
There is more than one "method" but for now,
just remember to use "post". Since this is a
client side form, you are going to use the mailto attribute
to tell the browser what to do with the form once someone
clicks on the submit button. So modify your <FORM> tag
-
<FORM
METHOD=POST ACTION="mailto:youremail@isp.com">
Replace the youremail@isp.com with your email
address.
Next, you need to add some places to enter information.
Let's just do a quick, what is your name form. Add the
following to your page -
<P>Your name:
<INPUT TYPE=text NAME="name"
SIZE="50">
Take a look at what you added and see if you can figure
out what type, name and size control.
Finally, you need a button for someone to submit the
form, so add in -
<INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT>
Then, just close out the open tags -
</FORM>
</BODY>
</HTML>
After saving it, open your page in your browser and take
a look. Try your form! Depending on your computer, you may
get a security warning or a failure. If so, upload your page
to your free host and try again.
The most common warning you'll see will be about the page
you are viewing trying to send an email and/or file. It is
alright to click "OK" or "Allow" because
you wrote the form and you didn't add in any viral agents,
did you?
There are a number of different <INPUT> types, all
of which are listed on the tag page for you to look over
later.
Before you get to that, though,
let's discuss server side forms a bit.
