FORMS

The information given here about the construction of forms is relevant for all web pages except for the reference to the server-side CGI script (Common Gateway Interface program or batch file generally written in C, Pascal or Perl). CGI scripts are resident on the web server and are responsible for doing such things as making forms work. If you are not a DCN subscriber you will need to contact your Internet Service Provider to find out how to refer on your web page to their server-side file for your forms.

Forms will not work on your hard drive. In order to check them you must upload them to your public_html directory on your Internet Service Provider's web server.

The form put here for you to examine includes a number of form elements and attributes but you will almost certainly need to "view" other authors' forms and read up about forms in an HTML reference in order to be able to construct a form in exactly the manner in which you need it to perform.

FORM STRUCTURE:
A form element within an HTML document/file is enclosed in a <FORM> </FORM> paired tag. The opening <FORM> tag requires a number of attributes and should look like this: <FORM METHOD="post" ACTION="script.url"> The "script.url" is the location on your ISP's web server where the CGI script that will translate your form resides. You will need to find out from your own Internet Service Provider exactly what should go here.

Now, view the source code of the form linked above, print it out, and design yourself a form!