Planning Your Forms

Before you start creating complex forms for your web pages, you should do some planning that will save you time and trouble in the long run.

First, decide what information you need to collect. That might sound obvious, but you need to think about this before you start worrying about the mechanics of creating the form.

Next, review this information and match each item with a type of form control. Ask yourself which type of control is most suited to the type of questions you're asking. If you need a yes or no answer, radio buttons or check boxes work great, but the textarea element is overkill. Try to make life easier for the users by making the type of control fit the question. This way, analyzing the information using a script, if necessary, will be much easier.

You also need to coordinate with the person writing the CGI script to match variables in the script with the names you're assigning to each control. There isn't much point in naming every control before collaborating with the script authorafter all, you'll need all the names to match. You also can create lookup tables that contain expansive descriptions and allowable values of each form control.

Finally, you might want to consider validating form input through scripting. Using JavaScript, you can embed small programs in your web pages. One common use for JavaScript is writing programs that verify a user's input is correct before she submits a form. I'll discuss JavaScript in more detail in Lesson 12, "Introducing JavaScript."