Chapter 5
Adding User Interactivity
What you will learn in this chapter:
- What forms are and how to create them
- How data entered into forms is received by the web server
- How and why you should validate data
- How to send user input elsewhere by e-mail
If you visit my little blog site, you can interact with it. You can add content by providing comments to articles, or you can use the rating system to indicate your displeasure with my efforts and thereby alter the total number of ratings and the average score for each entry on my site. You can define your own filtered view of the content to an extent by using the Search facility. Opportunities to interact with my site are somewhat limited, but they exist nevertheless.
Huge sites like Amazon and eBay simply wouldn’t work if they did not provide a means for you to interact with them. You can specify your preferences, choose items to purchase, make payments, post reviews, provide feedback, register your details with them, and have them remember all of this for future visits. In fact, they are so packed with interactive features that most people will tell you that they use Amazon or eBay, whereas the few people who happen to land on my site will more likely describe their activity as visiting the site. If you want users rather than visitors, you need to provide a way for people to interact with your site. You need to be able to accept and process their input. You need to allow them to personalize their experience, record their preferences, ...
