Head First HTML with CSS

How forms work
in the browser
To a browser, a form is just a bit of XHTML in a
page. You’ll see that you can easily create forms in
your pages by adding a few new elements. Here’s how
a form works from the browser’s perspective:
The browser loads the page
The browser loads the XHTML for a page
like it always does, and when it encounters
form elements, it creates controls on the page
that allow you to input various kinds of data. A
control is just something like a button or a text
input box or a drop down menu – basically
something that allows you to input data.
You enter data
You use the controls to enter data. Depending
on the type of control, this happens in
different ways. You can type a single line of
text into a text control, or you might click one
option of many in a checkbox control. We’ll
look at the different kinds of controls shortly.
You submit the form
You submit the form by clicking on a submit
button control. That’s the browser’s cue that it
needs to package up all the data and send that
data off to the server.
The server responds
Once the server has the form data, it passes
it off to the appropriate Web application
for processing. This processing results in a
brand new XHTML page that is returned to
the browser, and since it’s just XHTML, the
browser displays it for you.
xhtml forms
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