Fill-in Forms

Fill-in Forms are a type of World Wide Web CGI interface which allows the user to input data which can be manipulated by a server side program. An example of a fill-in form--with a Perl CGI to handle the output --can be found at the HTML for Dummies web site. This page is a fill in form to register the book.

URLs:

NCSA's Form support

This is a great way to learn about forms; it has lots of examples.

Carlos' FORMS Tutorial

A humorous approach to learning about fill-in forms.

W3E References:

Topic Forms in HTML pages

How to create forms in HTML documents, plus tag syntax.

CGI

A CGI is required to make use of the information gathered by a form. Without a CGI behind your form page, the form is just a pretty page.

Print References:

• The Foundations of WWW Programming with HTML and CGI. Ed Tittel, Sebastian Hassinger and Mike Erwin. 1995. (ISBN 1-56884-703-3)
• Web Programming Secrets. Ed Tittel. 1995. (ISBN)

Detail:

Fill-in forms are extremely useful in gathering information from Web users. Forms can be created easily to request information of all kinds. Writing the HTML code for the form page is easy, but writing the CGI program to handle and manipulate the gathered information may be difficult.

Some common CGI programs for e-mail, statistics, comments, and the like. are available to use in your own pages, but you will need to write, or hire someone to write, the CGI for any form page of your own creation.