Beginning CSS Web Development: From Novice to Professional

CHAPTER 9Forms

Without forms, a web site generally works in only one direction. Pages contain information and images, the user reads this information or looks at the images, and that is that. Forms allow the user to interact with the web site by exchanging data.

Forms are used for a huge number of purposes, from fairly simple functions such as logging in to a web application, leaving comments, and providing contact info, right up to enabling article entry, serving as questionnaires, and allowing résumé uploads, and can exist on one page or be spread across several. Forms are the only sensible method of collecting data from your visitors, and they are something we all have to embrace.

Web designers are often scared of building forms for a number ...