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

Text Input

To ask the user for a specific piece of information within a form, use the <input /> tag. This tag must fall between the <form> and </form> tags, but it can be anywhere on the page in relation to text, images, and other HTML tags. For example, to ask for someone's name you could type the following:

What's your first name? <input type="text" size="20" maxlength="30"
name="firstname" />
What's your last name? <input type="text" size="20" maxlength="30"
name="lastname" />

The type attribute indicates what type of form element to display—a simple one-line text entry box in this case. (Each element type is discussed individually in the following sections.)

The size attribute indicates approximately how many characters wide the text input box should be. If you are using a proportionally spaced font, the width of the input will vary depending on what the user enters. If the input is too long to fit in the box, most Web browsers will automatically scroll the text to the left.

maxlength determines the number of characters the user is allowed to type into the text box. If someone tries to type beyond the specified length, the extra characters won't appear. You can specify a length that is longer, shorter, or the same as the physical size of the text box. size and maxlength are used only for type="text" because other input types (check boxes, radio buttons, and so on) have a fixed size.

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