Now we'll step a little into the gray areas of HTML. Forms are a way to allow interactive use of your page. Forms allow the user to enter all sorts of information. That information is sent to a script for processing. Eventually, I'll add something on scripting, but until then, ask your ISP or sysop about how to write scripts.
Forms begin with the
tag and end with
. In between you can have entry blanks, text areas, checkboxes, buttons, radio buttons and any usual HTML construct. path/script.pl is the address of your script. Talk to your system administrator to find out about that.

Entry Blanks take the form name SIZE=##>. When the data is sent to the script for processing, every data element has a name. name is the name the data received from that entry blank will be called. ## is the number of characters wide the blank will be. If a user types in more than ## characters, the blank will scroll, but only ## will be displayed at a time.

Example:

Text Areas are like big entry blanks. Entry Blanks can only be one line, but Text Areas can be as big as you'd like. The workspace on the Scratch Pad is a Text Area.
Text Areas take a different form from the other form elements. They begin with . Any text between the tags will come up as the default text in the Text Area. name has the same meaning for all form elements. ## is the number of ROWS or COLumnS the Text Area will take up. Just like with entry blanks, if more than that is entered, it will scroll, but it will only display ##x## characters.

Example:

Radio Buttons and Checkboxes take the form name TYPE="type" VALUE="value">. type is either radio or checkbox. Checkboxes let the user check things from a list. Radio Buttons are similar, but only one button with a particular name came be pressed at a time. So, if you had two radio buttons named ANSWER, the user could only select one of them. If the user tries to pick a second button, the first one is unselected.
value is the data value the item passes to the script if the item is clicked. So, if a checkbox named BOB with a value of YES was checked, it would pass the script BOB=YES.

Example:
Radio Button #1 Checkbox #1
Radio Button #2 Checkbox #2
Other button types include submit and reset. These buttons take the form: , where value is the button's label, such as Return in the example below, and type is either submit or reset, respectively. submit is the button the user presses to send in the form. reset clears the entire form so the user can start over. The "submit" button is necessary. The form won't work without one. The "clear" button is optional.

NOTE: You can use the submit button as a link to another HTML page.




This code creates a button labeled Click Me! which acts as a link to webpage.html. The only catch is that you must specify the address absolutely. (although you can leave out the server name.) So, to link to this page I'd use ACTION="/crash/Advanced.html".

Example: This button will take you to the main menu:

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