Adobe® Dreamweaver® CS5 Bible

Chapter 13. Interactive Forms

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Forms overview

• Including forms in your Web page

• Using text fields and text areas

• Enabling options with radio buttons, checkboxes, and drop-down lists

• Dreamweaver Technique: Building a Form, Part 1

• Dreamweaver Technique: Building a Form, Part 2

• Building a jump menu

• Incorporating buttons in forms

• Adding hidden fields and password fields

• Making forms accessible

• Combining CSS with forms

A form, in the everyday world as well as on the Web, is a type of structured communication. When you apply for a driver's license, you're not told to randomly write down personal information; you're asked to fill out a form that asks for specific information, one piece at a time, in a specific manner. Web-based forms are just as precise, if not more so.

Dreamweaver has a robust and superior implementation of HTML forms — from the dedicated Forms category in the Insert panel to various form-specific Property inspectors. In addition to their importance as communication tools connecting the browsing public to Web server applications, forms are an integral part of building some of Dreamweaver's own objects. Forms also serve as major tools for Web developers because they can be altered on-the-fly; it's possible, for example, for a selection in one drop-down list to determine the contents of another. The dynamic aspects of forms are covered in Chapter 22.

Dreamweaver also includes another robust method of implementing forms: Spry. Once you understand how to set up a form and ...