if you are NOT editing this site with FrontPage, or
publishing to aFrontPage extension enabled
web server,
you will need to link the form below to a CGI script, PHP, ASP or some form
of database connection provided by your web host. You may want to check with
your host to learn more about connecting form pages.
It is important to note that often when a FrontPage website is published to a
server, the path to the "results" file (where the form results are being saved)
does not translate as it should. To remedy this, you can log in to your
server with FrontPage, open up the page with the form, right click your mouse
inside the form and select "Form Properties". The field "File" under where
you want to send the form results is often the problem. Browse to the
location on your server to a "results.txt" or "results.csv" file which is
usually in your _private folder. After you've done that, click Okay and
save your page.. test it out -- it should now work!
Please see the help page for the "contact.htm" page, also available in this
folder.
About creating forms
What is a form?
A form on a web site is similar to a paper form. You can use it to gather
information from site visitors, such as collecting their order, shipping, and
billing information. Typically, site visitors type their information in
form fields (form field: A data-entry
field on a page. A site visitor supplies information in a field either by
typing text or by selecting a field.) and indicate their preferences
by clicking option buttons, check boxes, and drop-down boxes. The can also
enter comments in text boxes.
Microsoft FrontPage enables you to create a
form based on the type of information you want to gather from site visitors by
either starting with a blank form that you can build on (by adding fields) or
by using the Form Page wizard. You can specify how to collect the data the
site visitors entered — the form results — and decide how you want to display
the results to the site visitor in the form of a confirmation page.
Note For forms to function on a web site, you must publish your
web site to a web server running the Microsoft
FrontPage Server Extensions (FrontPage
Server Extensions: A set of programs and scripts that support authoring in
FrontPage and extend the functionality of a Web server. ) or
SharePoint Team Services from Microsoft. Your web administrator or
Internet service provider (ISP: A business
that provides access to the Internet for such things as electronic mail, chat
rooms, or use of the World Wide Web. Some ISPs are multinational, offering
access in many locations, while others are limited to a specific region.)
(ISP) can tell you if this software is installed on your
Web server (Web server: A computer that
hosts Web pages and responds to requests from browsers. Also known as an HTTP
server, a Web server stores files whose URLs begin with http://.).
Types of commonly used forms
Contact information form
Requests form
Order form with shipping and billing information
Feedback form
Guest book
Search query form allowing visitors to search your web site
Log on form that prompts the the site visitors for their user name and
password
Note FrontPage includes templates to create a guestbook,
registration, or feedback form. You can also use wizards ,such as the Database
Interface Wizard, to create a form that saves data to a database.
Creating the form
There are several steps to creating an online form with Microsoft FrontPage.
After you have completed all of them, you have the option to go back and
change certain properties. For example, if your list of products has expanded,
you can add those products to the options that a site visitor chooses from in
a drop-down box. Or, you may decide that instead of having form results sent
to you in an e-mail, you want FrontPage to create a database to store the
information.
Adding fields to the form
Fields can be text boxes, option buttons, push buttons, and so forth,
depending on the kind of information you want the get from the site visitor.
After placing fields on your form, you can lay them out on the page as you
would text, using line breaks, tables,
cascading style sheets (CSS: A cascading
style sheet is a document containing style information that can be
referenced by multiple web pages. Styles define appearance and formatting of
content on web pages and allow authors more control over how content is
displayed in browsers.), and
positioning (positioning: Positioning is
another way to place elements, such as text and graphics, on a page.
Positioning lets the page author control the exact location and layer order
of a page element.). There are many different kinds of fields,
and you can even customize them to suit your needs.
The various form fields
Textbox
Use text boxes to collect a small amount of text, such as a name or a
number.
Enter your e-mail address:
Option buttons Use option buttons (also called
radio buttons) when you want the site visitor to select only one
option from a group.
A
B
C
Text area Use text areas to collect one or more lines of text, such as a
comment. This field scrolls to accommodate varying amounts of text.
Sign my guest book:
Drop-down box Use a drop-down box to present the site visitor with a list of
choices. This field is similar to using a group of option buttons, but
takes less space on your form. You can configure a drop-down box to
allow one or multiple selections.
Select a product:
Checkbox Use check boxes for optional items. The site visitor can select or
clear the check box. They can also select multiple items.
Push button Use push buttons to let site visitors submit the form after filling
it out, clear fields by resetting the form, or run your custom scripts.
You can also add a picture to a form to use in place of a submit
button. After filling out the form, the site visitor clicks the picture
to submit the form, and then the data from the form, including the name
of the picture field, is sent to the
form handler (form handler: A program
on a server that is executed when a site visitor submits a form. A form
in FrontPage is associated with a form handler.).
Advanced button
By inserting the Advanced button
into your form, you can write a script that will make your form do what
you need. The Advanced button is
highly customizable — you can use fancy fonts, colors, or even tables on
the button.
Group box
Add a group box to your form when you want to separate a group of
related controls or text from the rest of the information on the page or
in the current form.
File upload
You can give your site visitors the opportunity to send a file to
your web site. When you insert the File
Upload form field, site visitors click on the
Browse button, locate their file, and
then click Submit.
Password field
When you want a site visitor to enter a password to visit your web
site, add a password field to your registration form. A password field
is really just a one-line text box. When a site visitor types in this
field, most Web browsers will display the password as asterisks, to
protect confidentiality.
Note Only the
UNIX (UNIX: A multi-user,
multitasking operating system that exists in various forms and
implementations, typically used on proprietary computer workstations.
Many Web servers run on UNIX systems.) operating system allows
password validation and registration through a Web browser.
Password
Setting up functionality for each field After you have decided
what types of fields to add to your form, you can define what you want them
to do and how you want them to look. You can type directly on the firm to
include field labels and instructions. You can also set the properties for
each field. For example, you can specify the length of a text box, decide
whether an option is selected by default, and define the choices in a
drop-down box.
Setting data entry rules Also called "validation," data entry
rules ensure that a site visitor fills out the form correctly. For example,
you can set up an order form for your products, but unless the name,
address, and payment information are correctly entered, your customer won't
be able to complete and submit the order.
You can also specify a format for the information you want to collect.
For example, to collect a credit card number, you can set up a text box that
only accepts numbers and hyphens, and disallows other characters. You can
also require a fixed number of characters so that a site visitor does not
omit a number by mistake.
Setting up how you want to collect that information After a
site visitor submits the form, you must collect the data that was entered —
the form results — so you can view them, display them to the visitor, or
work with them as needed. FrontPage provides several
form handlers (form handler: A program on
a server that is executed when a site visitor submits a form. A form in
FrontPage is associated with a form handler.), which take the
form results and perform various actions. For example, when a site visitor
submits a form, FrontPage can save the contact information to a customer
database. Or, you can have the form results sent to you in an email or saved
as a text or HTML file.
Adding a confirmation page FrontPage automatically displays a
confirmation page to your site visitor (unless you are using a custom
script). You can also create your own confirmation page and decide which
fields to show your site visitor. If you do not create and assign a
confirmation page of your own, FrontPage will use the default confirmation
page, which displays a list of all the field names from the form and their
values.
Creating keyboard shortcuts A keyboard shortcut enables a site
visitor to select a field in a form by using the keyboard rather than by
clicking the field. The shortcut appears as an underlined letter in the
field label— the site visitor selects the field by pressing ALT plus the
underlined letter.
Specifying the tab
order for the form Site visitors can navigate through a form — move
from field to field — by pressing the TAB key. By default, the order of
fields on the page (from top to bottom) is the order in which a visitor can
tab through the form. You can, however, specify a different tab order.