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324

HOUR 19:Getting Interactive with Forms

16. Place the cursor in the bottom-left cell and type Finished?. Press the Tab key

to move to the lower-right cell and insert an Input (Submit) and an Input

(Reset) form control. This creates two buttons that read Submit and Reset,

respectively.

17. Open the Form Field Properties for the Submit button. In the Push Button

Properties, change the Name to submitButton, change the Value/Label to

Submit(with an uppercase S), leave the Button Type set to Submit, and set the

Tab Order to 5 (see Figure 19.8). Click OK to apply the changes.

FIGURE 19.7

In the TextArea

Box Properties

dialog, you can

set the width

and height of

the text area by

defining the

number of char-

acters and num-

ber of lines.

FIGURE 19.8

The Push Button

Properties dialog

lets you change

the text that dis-

plays on the but-

ton and its

function.

18. Repeat step 17 for the Reset button, but change the Name to

resetButton, the

Value/Label to Reset, and set the Tab Order to 6.

Now all the basic components for the email form are in place. Save the page and

test it in your browser (see Figure 19.9).

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Making Use of Form Results

325

As you can see, the form already looks pretty good, even though you haven’t

applied any styling to it yet. If you test the different elements, you can see that they

all work properly: You can insert text into the text boxes and make a selection from

the drop-down menu, and all the info resets when you click the Reset button.

Because you set the tab order for each element, if you select one and press the Tab

button on your keyboard, the next one is automatically selected.

However, there is still one major issue yet to be resolved: What happens to the infor-

mation after you click the Submit button?

Making Use of Form Results

To make an HTML form work, you need two main components: the form itself (which

you just created) and the functions that collect the info or results from the form and

send them off to be processed. Although building the form is a relatively simple task,

getting the form to perform the required actions is a bit more complicated.

After results are submitted from a form, the browser passes on the information to

whatever process has been defined by the designer or developer. These processes are

called server-side scripts, and they take the information, make the necessary alter-

ations to it, and send it off to a file, a database, or an email account. And this is

where things get complicated.

FIGURE 19.9

The contact.html

page with the

email form as it

appears in the

browser.

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326

HOUR 19:Getting Interactive with Forms

To process, or parse, the results from the form, the server that hosts the page has to

perform some actions. Unfortunately, several different server languages are avail-

able, and they are for the most part mutually exclusive. As a result, a function that

works perfectly on one server might generate only errors on another server. So,

before you start applying functionality to your forms, you have to find out what

language the hosting server speaks.

Most web servers run one of the two main server architectures: Linux Server or

Microsoft’s Windows Server. Both servers support a programming language called

PHP,whereas only Windows servers support the application framework called

ASP.NET. If you have a Windows server, there is a good chance it has FrontPage

Server extensions installed, but there is no guarantee. Therefore, it is imperative

that you find out what architecture the server you plan to put your page on is run-

ning and what languages and extensions it supports. If you follow the next tutorial

and upload the page to a Linux server or a Microsoft server without the FrontPage

Server extensions installed, the form will not work properly.

By the

Way

If you are hosting your page on a Linux server, you need to use PHP to create

the email form functionality. Hour 21, “Beyond the Basics, Part 1: PHP in

Expression Web 4,” talks about PHP and has a full tutorial on how to make the

email form work using this programming language.

Did you

Know?

▼

Try It Yourself

Send Form Results

Now that you have a basic form built in to your page, you need to connect it to the

functions that make it work. Provided your server has FrontPage Server extensions

installed, Expression Web 4 has built-in functions that make it easy to create forms

to send results directly to a predefined email address, file, or database.

1. Right-click anywhere inside the email form and select Form Properties from

the context menu. This opens the Form Properties dialog (see Figure 19.10).

2. Because you want the form to generate an email, select the Send To radio but-

ton at the top of the dialog.

3. In the Send To area, you have two options: You can enter a filename and you

can enter an email address. If you enter a filename, the results of the form

will be sent to a file stored on the server. The two options can be used sepa-

rately or together. Saving the results to a file and sending it to an email

address is an easy way to make sure the message doesn’t get lost.

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Making Use of Form Results

327

Click the Browse button next to the File Name area to open the browser and

create a new folder called Contact. Click Cancel and enter Contact/emails.txt

in the File Name area.

FIGURE 19.10

You can change

and configure

the different

functions of a

form from the

Form Properties

dialog.

Did you

Know?

Step 3 asked you to use the Browse button to create a new folder without actu-

ally selecting a file inside this folder. You can use this trick to create new fold-

ers while inside a dialog without having to close the dialog.

4. In the E-mail Address area, enteryour own email address (see Figure 19.11).

FIGURE 19.11

With the Send To

function, you can

choose whether

to send the

results of the

form to a file on

the server, an

email address,

or both.

5. To further configurethe output generated by the form, click the Options but-

ton. This opens the Saving Results dialog.

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328

HOUR 19:Getting Interactive with Forms

6. The first tab of the Saving Results dialogdeals with the file to which the content

is saved (see Figure 19.12). From here, you can change the location of the file

and the file format (how the content is displayed within the file). For most pur-

poses, Formatted Text is the best option, but there are many alternatives, includ-

ing HTML and XML and text database variants. Below the File Format option,

you can check whether you want to include the form field names and whether

you want to generate an optional second file. Leave everything as it is in this tab.

FIGURE 19.12

When saving the

results to a file,

you have a

choice of many

different file

formats.

7. Under the E-mail Results tab, you can configure what the email sent by the

form will look like. The email address bar is self-explanatory, and the E-mail

Format menu provides the same options as the File Format menu in the prior

tab. Under E-mail Message Header, you can set the Subject line and the Reply-

To line for the email generated. Each of these can be set to a standard line of

text or to a form field name by checking the Form Field Name box. Check the

Form Field Name box for the Subject line and insert the field name options

(the drop-down menu). For the Reply-to Line, check the Form Field Name box

and enter the field name email. That way, the Reply-To address matches the

address the visitor entered in the form (see Figure 19.13).

8. The Confirmation Pagetab provides you with the option of sending the visitor

to a specific page in your site after the file has been stored, email has been

sent, or both. This can be any page on your site, but it is normal to create a

page with a message telling the visitor the process was successful. If you do

not insert a link, the server generates a page for you automatically. (However,

this page does not match the rest of your site.) Even though the page does not

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Making Use of Form Results

329

exist yet, set the URL of Confirmation Page to contact/confirmed.html (see

Figure 19.14). If you have inserted validation scripts in your form (such as

scripts to ensure that certain fields are filled out), you can also create a custom

page to redirect the visitor to if the form is not properly filled out.

FIGURE 19.13

You can set the

Subject line and

Reply-To line to a

predetermined

line of text or

get the info from

one of the form

fields.

FIGURE 19.14

With the

Confirmation

Page option, you

can send the

visitor to a spe-

cific page after

sending the

form.

9. The last tabin the Saving Results dialog is Saved Fields. From here, you can

decide what fields should be saved and submitted from the form. By default,

Expression Web 4 inserts all the fields, including the Input (Submit) button. In

almost every case, you want to remove this last instance because it is unneces-

sary. (The fact that the file has been saved or the email sent means that the

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330

HOUR 19:Getting Interactive with Forms

Submit button was clicked.) To remove it, simply highlight the submitButton

instance in the window and delete it (see Figure 19.15). The Saved Fields tab

also allows you to save the date and time of the form submission in various

different formats that you can select from the drop-down menus. Finally, you

can choose to save additional information about the user, including the remote

computer name, username, and browser type. (Note that the username will be

saved only if the user is required to log in before submitting the form.)

FIGURE 19.15

You can decide

what fields are

to be saved and

submitted from

the Saved Fields

tab. From here,

you can also

include new

fields that con-

tain the date

and time and

information

about the user.

10. When you click OK to save the changes, a warning appears and tells you that

the file you are trying to link to does not exist and asks you whether you want

to save the link anyway. This is because, in step 8, you entered a hyperlink to

a page you have not created yet. Click Yes.

11. When you click OK in the Form Properties dialog, another warning will likely

appear, telling you that this form cannot be configured to send emails because

it is at a disk-based location or on a server that has not been configured to

send emails. This is because the email functionality you have configured

requires server-side scripting in the form of FrontPage Server extensions. Your

local computer will not have these capabilities installed. The warning asks

whether you want to remove the email recipient. Click No to keep the email

address in the script. After the page is uploaded to a server with FrontPage

Server extensions, it will work properly.

The email form with all the necessary functionality is now complete.

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Forms in Code View

331

Other Uses for Form Results

Creating an email form using forms is just the tip of the gigantic iceberg of possibili-

ties that are available. Forms can be used for a wide range of functions that go far

beyond simple text communication.

If you open the Form Properties dialog again, notice that in addition to the Send To

option, you can also select Send to Database or Send to Other Scripts. These func-

tions let you use forms to communicate with and make alterations to databases. The

databases can, in turn, manage content on a website or an online store, or even

keep track of warehouse stocks for a company. The possibilities are virtually endless.

Setting up a form with a database or script connection requires both a server that

supports the chosen script language and a deeper understanding of the use of data-

bases on the Web. For this reason, it is outside the scope of this book.

Forms in Code View

As explained in the beginning of this hour, forms and form controls are simple

HTML elements. To get an idea of just how simple these elements are (and through

that, an understanding of why they are so heavily used), let’s peek behind the cur-

tain and look at the form in Code view.

To start, click anywhere inside the form while in Split view and look at the Quick

Tag Selector. Depending on where you placed the cursor, the last few tags differ, but

the main <form> tag should be the first one in the series (see Figure 19.16).

The<form> tag was the first element you inserted into the page, and all the form

controls are contained within this tag. By looking at the form code in Code view,

you can see that Expression Web 4 has organized it in such a way that it is easy to

read.

A closer look at each form control shows you that they are all based on a basic code

formula. Click the first text box as an example. The code highlighted in Code view

is simple to read:

As you can see, the form function is no different from any other HTML tag, and you

insert the different attributes in the same way as any other tag. This also means

that you can use the Tag Properties panel to make changes to the form functions.

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332

HOUR 19:Getting Interactive with Forms

More than that, it also means you can apply CSS styles to the form controls just as

you have done with other tags throughout this book. For example, by making a

new style with the selector name form, you can set the font family,font size,

background color, box, or any number of other style attributes for the forms.

Alternately, you can set individual styles for the different form elements separately

by applying classes to them.

When you put them next to one another, you can get a clear idea of how exactly

the code for each of the form controls works:

Text box:

Drop-down box:

<option selected=”selected”>Question</option>

<option>Comment</option>

<option>Suggestion</option>

<option>Random Thought</option>

</select>

Text area:

FIGURE 19.16

The

<form>

tag

encapsulates all

the elements

that make up

the form.

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Summary

333

Input (Submit):

Input (Reset):

As you can see, each tag starts with the type of function followed by the name you

gave each instance, the tab index, and, if necessary, the type of control it is.

In Hour 21, when you use the same form you just built to create a PHP-based email

form, you see that to unlock the true potential of HTML forms you need to have a

basic understanding of the code behind form controls. This is because the Form Field

Properties dialogs give you access to only a select few of the many attributes and

properties available. As a result, more advanced functions have to be added manu-

ally with the help of the Tag Properties panel or IntelliSense.

Summary

Forms are key components in taking your sites from being one-way monologues to

two-way dialogues. By including forms in your site, you provide the visitor with a

way to interact with the site and make choices or send and receive information

based on what she wants. You could go as far as saying that, without forms, there

would be no search engines, social networking sites, or blogs, and the Web would be

little more than a long list of boring archival material.

To get an idea of how prevalent and varied the use of form controls is throughout

the Web, think about this: Every time you see a text box, check box, radio button, or

any of the other main form elements, you are actually looking at a form. In fact,

every time you enter a word into a search engine and click the Search button, you

are using a form connected to a massive database!

In this hour, you learned how to build a simple form that lets the visitor input infor-

mation that is sent to a file on the server and to your own email address. You saw

that building the form itself is as easy as dragging and dropping the elements into

place and using the Form Field Properties dialogs to make them do what you want

them to.

You also learned that when dealing with forms, you have to take into consideration

what kind of server the form will reside on. Because static HTML pages can run on

any web server, the transformation of text and selections in a form on a web page

into a readable file or email requires server-side scripts, and these scripts have to be

written in a language the server understands and allows.

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