Chapter 15: Forms
Continued
Hidden fields
Yet another type of input is HIDDEN input.
<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN
NAME="FORMNAME" VALUE="Company Position Form
1">
A HIDDEN input is a name/value pair that is
returned to you but does not show up anywhere on the web
page. The hidden input above is needed for use with Mailto
Formatter.
Let's suppose you were a company trying to generate
leads for a new product. You have a standard form for
gathering information... name, company, phone, products
interested in, etc. The only problem is there are 6
slightly different versions of the form in 6 slightly
different places. You need to know what's coming from
where. What to do?
You could add a HIDDEN input to your forms
like so...
<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME="FORMNAME"
VALUE="Version
1"> ...for the first version
<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME="FORMNAME"
VALUE="Version
2"> ...for the second version
<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME="FORMNAME"
VALUE="Version
3"> ...for the third version
And so on and so forth.
By the way, it doesn't matter what the name/value pair
in the hidden input is (or any input for that
matter). I have just been using "FORMNAME"
because it saved me some typing. This would be a perfectly
legitimate HIDDEN input...
<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME="E" VALUE="Mc^2"> ...You
would get back E=Mc^2
HIDDEN inputs are also useful for cgi
scripts. For example, many Internet Service Providers have
a script you can have your forms sent to. It then spits the
form back to you all nice and neat and ready for human
consumption. The hidden input tells the cgi script who you
are, where to send the parsed data, etc.
Submit and Reset
Buttons
Last on the list are the SUBMIT and
RESET buttons.
They really are very simple...
<INPUT
TYPE=SUBMIT>
SUBMIT of course, sends the data...
...and RESET, clears the form.
<INPUT
TYPE=RESET>
We can easily change what the buttons say.
<INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT VALUE="Send it away
Ray!"><BR>
<INPUT TYPE=RESET VALUE="Clear the
form Norm!"><P>
If necessary, the SUBMIT button can also have
a NAME. You would need this if, for whatever
reason, you had more than one SUBMIT button.
Next we must tell the browser where to send the data we
gather and how to send it. There are two basic things you
can do:
1) you can send the data to a cgi script for processing,
or
2) you can have the data emailed to you.
As for the first, whoever wrote the script can tell you how
the data should be sent.
The second, or mailto form should have the
following attributes in the <FORM>
tag.
Note- Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3.0
does not support mailto forms. When you try to submit
the information, the new mail message window pops up.
Explorer does however support forms sent to a CGI
script.
<FORM METHOD=POST
ACTION="mailto:xxx@xxx.xxx"
ENCTYPE="application/x-www-form-urlencoded">
This
line is very important. The only thing you have to do is
plug in your email address after mailto: The rest must be
written exactly as shown. The words FORM,
METHOD, POST & ACTION
do not have to be capitalized but there must be a
space between each attribute.. between FORM
& METHOD, between POST &
ACTION, and between .com" &
ENCTYPE.
Unfortunately the data will be sent to you in this 'only
useful to a computer' format...
FORMNAME=New+Entrant&NAME=R.U.+Havinfun&ADDRESS=1313+Mockingbird+Lane
&CITY=Beverly+Hills&STATE=CA
What you'll need is a program to turn it into 'useful to
a human' format...
FORMNAME=New Entrant
NAME=R.U. Havinfun
ADDRESS=1313 Mockingbird Lane
CITY=Beverly Hills
STATE=CA
Mailto
Formatter (1.3MB, Win 95) is an excellent little
freeware utility that does this job quite nicely.
| Some
mail programs are capable
of converting the data
without resorting to a
separate program. You may
want to try this method
first. Just remove the
instruction
ENCTYPE="application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
and in its place use
ENCTYPE="text/plain". |
|
When you put a mailto form on your page and someone
sends you information, you'll notice that it is sent with a
default Subject. If your visitor was using Netscape you'd
get the default Subject "Form posted from Mozilla".
Other browsers might send "Form Response", etc.
You can change this by editing what's in the
<FORM> tag as follows...
<FORM METHOD=POST
ACTION="mailto:xxx@xxx.xxx?subject=Company feedback form"
ENCTYPE="application/x-www-form-urlencoded">
Your own HTML
page...
Open the page "feedback.htm" in Notepad, and add the
following (the blue text is what to add).
<html>
<body background="bgnd.gif">
<center><h1>Feedback
Form</h1></center>
<br>
<form method=post
action="mailto:YOUREMAILADDRESS?subject=Feedback"
enctype="text/plain">
<b>My name is: </b><input type=text
name="name">
<p>
<b>I work as a:</b><br>
.
.
</p>
<p>
<b>When it comes to web
browsers:</b><br>
.
.
</p>
<b>I rate your site as:</b><br>
.
.
</p>
<p>
<b>Comments:</b><br>
.
.
</p>
<p>
<input type="submit" value="Send it!"><br>
<input type="reset" value="Clear it!">
</p>
</body>
</html>
Save the file.
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