XHTML Forms
The first site I came across with good information about XHTML for was a site called The Web Authoring FAQ on their Forms chapter. They answer a lot of questions new designers might have about the different aspects of forms. I was actually curious about the section on mailto forms. I am working on a site for someone who wants me to add some forms but does not want to get into the server side of things, only wants the information in the forms to come to him via email. This site says that using mailtoin XHTML forms is unreliable so I will have to work out a different way of doing it. Maybe PHP allows for emailing forms more easily and reliably.
About.com also had a good section on explaining all of the XHTML Form Tags/Elements and their functions. It provided you with a library of tags and elements which you can click on to get a greater explanation of their uses and how the function.
The last source I used for learning about XHTML forms was the Building Forms chapter of our textbook. I think that is the best source of information about forms that I have come across during my research so far. They do a very good job of explaining all of the tags and element, giving you code examples, and visualisations of what the code looks like in a browser.
And just in case anyone is curious about my mailto questions in the first paragraph. I looked up some info on PHP forms and found this article showing how to make a simple form in XHTML and using PHP to generate and email with the data submitted. A Practical PHP Form to Mail.
mabyerlyblog said,
February 25, 2009 at 2:17 pm
I would like to know more about the customer’s request. What was his reason for wanting the form to go to his email? Where does a form go when it is filled out on a website?
airimpact said,
February 26, 2009 at 7:36 pm
thanks for the clarification on the backslash, this is my first time messing with all this and sometimes some of it gets very confusing. So then with html you could us caps in your code but in xhtml you have to make sure they are all lowercase..?
So this is what you would use to get the forms people would fill out on your site sent to you when they are done.