Sams Teach Yourself HTML 4 in 24 Hours

By Dick Oliver

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Put Your HTML Page Online Today
  • I. Your First Web Page
  • Hour 1. Understanding HTML and XML
  • Hour 2. Create a Web Page Right Now
  • Hour 3. Linking to Other Web Pages
  • Hour 4. Publishing Your HTML Pages
  • II. Web Page Text
  • Hour 5. Text Alignment and Lists
  • Hour 6. Text Formatting and Font Control
  • Hour 7. Email Links and Links Within a Page
  • Hour 8. Creating HTML Forms
    • How HTML Forms Work
    • Creating a Form
    • Text Input
    • Identifying Each Piece of Form Data
    • Including Hidden Data
    • Check Boxes
    • Radio Buttons
    • Selection Lists
    • Text Areas
    • Submit!
    • Creating a Custom Submit Button
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Workshop
  • III. Web Page Graphics
  • Hour 9. Creating Your Own Web Page Graphics
  • Hour 10. Putting Graphics on a Web Page
  • Hour 11. Custom Backgrounds and Colors
  • Hour 12. Creating Animated Graphics
  • IV. Web Page Design
  • Hour 13. Page Design and Layout
  • Hour 14. Graphical Links and Imagemaps
  • Hour 15. Advanced Layout with Tables
  • Hour 16. Using Style Sheets
  • V. Dynamic Web Pages
  • Hour 17. Embedding Multimedia in Web Pages
  • Hour 18. Interactive Pages with Applets and ActiveX
  • Hour 19. Web Page Scripting for Non-Programmers
  • Hour 20. Setting Pages in Motion with Dynamic HTML
  • VI. Building a Web Site
  • Hour 21. Multipage Layout with Frames
  • Hour 22. Organizing and Managing a Web Site
  • Hour 23. Helping People Find Your Web Pages
  • Hour 24. Planning for the Future of HTML
  • VII. Appendixes
  • A. Readers' Most Frequently Asked Questions
  • B. HTML Learning Resources on the Internet
  • C. Complete HTML 4 Quick Reference
  • D. HTML Character Entities

Creating a Form

Every form must begin with a <form> tag, which can be located anywhere in the body of the HTML document. The form tag normally has two attributes, method and action:

<form method="post" action="mailto:me@mysite.com">

Nowadays, the method is almost always "post", which means to send the form entry results as a document. (In some special situations, you may need to use method="get", which submits the results as part of the URL header instead. For example, "get" is sometimes used when submitting queries to search engines from a Web form. If you're not yet an expert on forms, just use "post" unless someone tells you to do otherwise.)

The action attribute specifies the address to which to send the form data. You have two options here:

• You can type the location of a form-processing program or script on a Web server computer, and the form data will then be sent to that program.
• You can type mailto: followed by your email address, and the form data will be sent directly to you whenever someone fills out the form.

The form in Figures 8.1 and 8.2 includes every type of input you can currently use on HTML forms (with one exception: the button tag is discussed in Hour 19, "Web Page Scripting for Non-Programmers" ). Figure 8.3 shows how the form in Figure 8.2 might look after someone fills it out. Refer to these figures as you read the following explanations of each type of input element.

Figure 8.1 All parts of a form must fall between the <form> and </form> tags.

Figure 8.2 The form listed in Figure 8.1 uses nearly every type of HTML form input element.

Figure 8.3 Visitors to your Web site fill out the form with their mouse or keyboard, and then click the Click Here to Submit button.

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