Boot Camp

Web Authoring Boot Camp
17
HTML Forms
HTML forms are used to pass data to a server, or to collect data to send in an email. You
can use them, for instance, to get contact information from your visitors, and to elicit
comments and opinions.
A form can contain input elements like text fields, checkboxes, radio-buttons, submit
buttons and more. It can also contain select lists, textarea, fieldset, legend, and label elements.
Users generally complete a form by modifying its controls (entering text, selecting
menu items, etc.), before submitting the form to an agent for processing (e.g., a Web
server, a mail server, etc.) Some form of scripts (server-side, client-side, or both) must be
used to process the visitor’s input once it is submitted.
Users interact with forms through named controls. A control’s control name is given by its
name attribute. The scope of the name attribute for a control within a form element is the
form element. These elements are either block or inline elements, but are collected here
as their use is more restricted than other inline or block elements.
New HTML5 form attributes include autofocus, autocomplete, list, required, multiple,
pattern, min and max, step, placeholder, numbers, times, telephone and color. At this time
most are not supported at all or only by one or two browsers and versions, and none of
the new form selectors are supported. I will mention useful HTML5 things in the context
of the rest of the forms as appropriate.
Form Methods
In HTML, one can specify two different submission methods for a form using the method
attribute. The two methods are post and get.
• Post: Form data is to appear within a message body, and/or for anything like storing
or updating data, or ordering a product, or sending email.
• Get: Form data is to be encoded (by a browser) into a URL, and for getting (retrieving)
data.
Form Handlers
In order to get a form working, it is not enough to just design the form itself. You also
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