Coding and Accessibility Requirements for Internet Connection Wizard Sign-up

The new ICW-mode sign-up mechanism in the IEAK is based on the idea that an Internet sign-up server should look and act like a standard Windows wizard. Although the ICW uses the power and flexibility of HTML, it does not use the same formatting as HTML.

This means the HTML pages in the wizard use the Windows system colors and fonts and also must meet accessibility requirements. Unless otherwise specified, the wizard HTML pages cannot contain any special HTML formatting such as tables with visible borders, images, or anchors. Only plain text and form elements (where required) are allowed. Tables with invisible borders can be used for layout.

To match the user's system colors, all HTML pages except the Icwsign.htm page should contain no color or font attributes unless otherwise specified. The parent wizard defines font styles and colors to match the user's system.

The only requirement for implementing forms within the HTML pages is that the forms use the NAME parameters in the <FORM> elements defined in the specification. You can specify all token names for other elements in your HTML pages and they will be posted to your sign-up server.

Back and Next button functionality

ICW-mode sign-up has specific requirements that must be met in order for the Back and Next buttons in the Internet Connection wizard to work correctly.

Back button

For the Back button to work properly, you must add a FORM element to the sign-up server page that specifies the URL of the Back button. To retain the data previously collected in the sign-up process, you must append all data that you would like to retain to the URL used for the Back button.

The following is the FORM element required for the Back button to send the user to the previous page of the sign-up process. Note that the data is appended to the URL in name/value pairs:

<FORM NAME="BACK"
ACTION="http://myserver/page2.asp"?firstname=bob&lastname=smith&address=..."></FORM>

Note

• The NAME element and its value must be in all caps because the ICW is case-sensitive.

Next button

For the Next button to work properly, you must add a FORM element to the sign-up server page that specifies the URL of the Next button. For the data collected to be passed to the next page in the sign-up process, you must add hidden form fields on each of your sign-up server pages that contain the data elements collected on this and all previous screens. The URL you reference must contain code that collects the data from the previous page and displays the next page of the sign-up process.

The following is the FORM element required for the Next button to send the user to the next page of the signup process:

<FORM NAME="NEXT" ACTION="http://myserver/page2.asp"></FORM>

The sample sign-up server code included in the IEAK already conforms to these requirements.

Accessibility

To ensure that the elements on the page are accessible by using only the keyboard, each form element should meet the following requirements:

• An access key (hotkey) must be associated with it. Use the Internet Explorer ACCESSKEY= parameter in the <INPUT> tag. The access key character should be highlighted with an underline using the <u> tag. The letters b, f, g, n, and o are reserved for the ICW and cannot be used as access keys. For more information about the ACCESSKEY parameter, see the Microsoft Site Builder Network Workshop.
• Each element on the page must be part of the ICW TAB-key order. To be included in the ICW TAB-key order, the element must have a unique ID in the <INPUT> tag.
• Each element should have a label associated with it. To associate a label for the different HTML form input types, use the Internet Explorer LABEL= parameter.

The following is an example of a radio button form element that meets these accessibility requirements: