Page 211 - DCAP408_WEB_PROGRAMMING

Unit 8: ASP Web Forms

Each text box, list box, check box or radio button in a form is a field. We need a way to create Notes
form fields within our form.

8.1 Using Form Fields

To create text boxes, check boxes, and radio buttons, we should use <INPUT> tag. The <INPUT>
tag has a number of properties, but we will only concentrate on the following three:
 NAME- The name tag uniquely identifies each element in the form.

 TYPE- The TYPE tag determines what type of form field is displayed. To display a text box,
we should set TYPE equal to TEXT. To create a check box we should assign TYPE equal to
CHECKBOX.

 VALUE- The value tag determines the default value for the form field. This property is
important when processing the information submitted by list boxes, check boxes, and
radio buttons.

Designing Forms

A few things are important worth considering before designing form:
1. To make sure that the form has a submitting button.
2. The form should be easy for the user to complete. We have four form fields at your
disposal: the text box list box check box and radio button. Make sure that the type of form
field used best fits the information needing to be collected. For example, if we are going
to ask for a user’s mailing address it makes more sense to have a list box that contains the
50 states than to have the user type in the name of his or her state of residency.

Example: The first thing to do is to ask,” What information do I need from the user?” In
this case the information needed would be user’s name, street address, city, state and zip code.
We may also want to obtain some background information on the user as well, such as how
often he purchase widgets.

Based on these understandings we need following form fields:
 Text boxes would work well for entering the first and last names of the customer, as well
as for the street address and zip code.

 A list box should be employed so that the users can select their states, instead of typing
state names or postal abbreviations list box, containing 50 states, may seem unwieldy, but
resist the temptation to use a text box. When using a text box, we are allowing users to
enter anything, where a list box requires them to choose one of the viable options. If users
are permitted to type in the names of their states, several different values can be received
for one particular state.

 Radio buttons would work well for the background information on the user’s widget
buying habits.
 A simple check box would suffice for the online newsletter subscription.

Send Information by Using Forms

A common use of intranet and Internet server applications is to process a form submitted by a
browser. With ASP, we can embed scripts written in VBScript directly into an HTML file to
process the form. ASP processes the script commands and returns the results to the browser.

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