CGVC 247 Week 9

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CGVC 247Week 9

• Forms!

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The Power of the Form

• So Far everything weve done has revolved around
  presenting information to our users
• Forms allow us to gather information from them!
• Think of all the ways you have interacted with a
  website.

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The Power of the Form

• So Far everything weve done has revolved around
  presenting information to our users
• Forms allow us to gather information from them!
• Think of all the ways you have interacted with a
  website.

Applications Shopping Guestbooks Voting
Surveys Cutomer Service Becoming a
Member Requesting Newsletters
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The Forms Two Faces

• Forms have two sides
• The form and the form objects
• What the user sees and interacts with
• We can control using DHTML
• DOM!
• The processing of the form
• What happens to the data that the form collects
• Normally server side processes data from form

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Form objects?

• Text Field
• Text fields accept any type of alphanumeric
  entries. The entered text can be displayed as a
  single line, as multiple lines, or as bullets or
  asterisks (for password protection).
• Hidden Field
• Lets you store data to use later.
• Check Box
• Check boxes allow multiple responses in a single
  group of options, a user can select as many
  options as apply.

• Radio Button
• Radio buttons represent exclusive choices.
  Selecting a button within a group deselects all
  others in the group. For example a user can
  select Yes or No.
• List/Menus
• The List option displays the option values in a
  scrolling list and allows users to select
  multiple options in the list. The Menu option
  displays the option values in a pop-up menu and
  allows users to select only a single choice.
• Button

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How do we get the stuff in the form?

• Post vs. Get
• In the ltformgt tag, there is the method attribute.
• Post sends the data
• Get passes the data on the URL. It has a limited
  size, and is exposed to the end user.
• Mail it!
• There is also actionmailtosomeone_at_somewhere.com
  ?subjectForm Info
• Sends name/value pairs
• Lets look at some examples.