Overview

Up until now, we have been creating pages that share information with the visitor. Now let's ask the users of our site to share information with us. By creating a Web form, we allow visitors to input information and then submit that data by pushing a button. How cool!! Now your visitor can send you feedback - or, better yet, place orders online.

Everyone who shops online has used a Web form. Remember to keep the design simple and easy to use. Have you ever tried to order online, become frustrated with the process, and then given up? Make your forms quick to load and easy to read.

This lesson focuses on creating input fields, which allow users to submit information, select products, answer questions, and enter large blocks of text. In the next lesson, we will explore how to process this form data so we can receive it in an email message.

Common uses of forms are surveys, online order forms, and feedback forms.

Common actions that are performed on the data after it has been received from the form include:

1. Sending an email that contains the data
2. Sending the customer a confirmation email
3. Posting the data to a Web page
4. Storing the data in a database
5. Performing a search based on the data entered into the form

In this class, we will be processing the data as an email that is sent to you. Writing the data to a Web page or to an online database requires more programming skills than can be provided in this course. You may want to enroll in a class on Perl, PHP, or ASP if you want to create more complicated programming scripts.

instructor contact information
robert caruso - bob@alwaysangels.com 527-4999 X1142
linda hemenway - lhemenway@santarosa.edu (707) 527-4855

copyright 2004 linda hemenway