Web Design All-in-One for Dummies®

Chapter 14. Designing Web Forms

In This Chapter

• Determining which data to request from visitors

• Encrypting collected form data

• Building validating Web forms

• Using Dreamweaver's Spry Form fields

• Testing and publishing Web forms

If you have ever filled out an online survey, signed up for a Web site's newsletter, or purchased something on the Internet, you've probably used a form. While the forms themselves come in many shapes and sizes, all forms contain specific HTML tags, often combined with JavaScript or some programming language, that allow sites to collect information from visitors for a variety of different reasons, including to sign up for services, request information, join a mailing list, purchase products, register for events, pay bills, handle online banking, and much more.

Though not every Web site includes a form, as a designer you should understand what forms are and how they work so that you are poised to build one when the need arises. Furthermore, despite its somewhat complicated sounding functionality, building a form in HTML is pretty easy because you only need to use a handful of tags to create the individual form fields. After you determine which information you'd like to collect from visitors, you can begin to organize the form contents into a neat table format, complete with form labels on one side and form fields for user input on the other.

After building the form in ...