Platinum Edition Using XHTML™, XML, and Java™ 2

Form Elements

XHTML forms are a Web surfer's gateway to interactive content. Forms collect information from a user, and then a script or program on a Web server uses the information to compose a custom response to the form submission.

For all the form controls that are available to you as a document author, you need to know surprisingly few XHTML elements to produce them. These elements, together with some new features introduced in the HTML 4.0 recommendation that improve form accessibility for the disabled, are covered in this section.

▸ For more about forms, see Chapter 8, "Forms"

<form>

Type:

Container

Function:

Contains the text and elements that compose an XHTML form (see Figure 3.17).

Figure 3.17. XHTML forms gather user input and send ...