HTML and CSS —

Customizing and Advancing Your Forms

You've learned everything in this tutorial you need to know to create effective, useful, and accessible forms. Again, although they're not pretty just yet, you'll be able to spruce them up when you learn how using CSS.

For now, you'll want to take two important steps. The first is to build a complete form from start to finish, using as many text fields, text areas, check boxes, radio buttons, and menu lists as your needs require.

Then, of course, is the issue of how your form will be processed. Forms processing can be straightforward or fairly complex, depending upon your needs. Forms processing is also done on a number of server types, so technologies will varyand what those technologies can do (and how far you can take them) with your forms will also vary. Fortunately, many free resources exist to help you understand and implement your forms more efficiently.

QUANTUM LEAP

To learn more about various aspects of forms processing, see the Web Authoring FAQ from the Web Design Group, http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/forms.html.

For a list of numerous remote hosts for a range of form-processing needs, check out The CGI Resource, http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Remotely_Hosted/Form_Processing/.

For PHP-based form scripts, see http://php.resourceindex.com/Complete_Scripts/Form_Processing/

For forms processing on the Microsoft .NET platform, this article will be very helpful to you: http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2003/01/06/formsauthp1.html.