Creating Interactive Web Pages Using HTML Forms

How to get the data from your forms

mailto:
• simply put <FORM ACTION="mailto:yourname@youremailaddress.net?subject=Form from my web page" METHOD="POST" ENCTYPE="text/plain"> inside your form.  This is simplest way, but versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer before version 4.0 won't recognize a mailto: code within a <FORM> construct, so if people use an older IE browser they won't be able to use the form.  There are other browsers that won't be able to use your forms as well, but it's a small percentage.
• Be verbose about the NAMES arguments in your form.  It will make the email messages you get more readable.

What the results of your form look like when they're mailed to you
If you get too many emails that are not formatted, you may want to look into mailto: formatting software:


Mailto: Formatters

• Search shareware.com for mailto formatters (just type in "mailto"): these will take the message you save from your email and convert them, stripping them of extraneous characters.  The one I'm familiar with called Mailto:Formatter by Robert Fries is, unfortunately, no longer available.

If you're willing to spend a little money, there are programs such as Formkeeper ($25), which format your messages and organize them a bit as well.


CGI scripts

• Have to be running your own server and have some knowledge of CGI scripting, or at least know enough to use one of the many freely available CGI scripts for mailto formatting (see below).  All it does is format the email message you get so that it's readable, and displays a "message sent" page to the person who fills out the form.
• We do not accept anyone else's CGI scripts on our own servers.  For security reasons, you must be very careful about the code you run on your Web server -- even the most trustworthy of programmers can accidentally leave a security hole in the code.  If you truly want to have CGI capability, we'll help you set up your own web server.
• Go to Matt's Script Archive for other cgi scripts.- Don't forget to read the copyright notice.  George Mitrevski, on his form-mail tutorial page, claims you can use UV's server, which is using this script, for your own forms.
• Or check out the CGI Resources Index for more mail-formatting programs
• There are places that will let you use their cgi scripts to format the email you get from your forms.  See Response-O-Matic.
• There are commercial sites that advertise access to cgi-bin directories on their servers so that you can use one of their scritps for processing -- I know nothing about them but that they exist.


Javascripts

• Entirely client-side, so you need not worry about your server's security. There are examples and free javascripts out on the Web (search for them). Or tackle learning it yourself (hey, life's too short! Steal the scripts instead).
• Nocgi javascript for forms & email formatting - Nocgi will not only format your email, it does field validation as well. Here's what your email and the form from the Nocgi javascript looks like.
• Those who know a little about Javascript and want to learn more about it and forms should look at http://www.webreference.com/javascript/960610/
• Don't forget to look at Hot Potatoes.  It's designed for multiple-choice questions, but if you want to collect any kind of data in that format you can't.  Main drawback: no mailto:.
• There are lots of cut-and-paste Javascript repositories.  A few are: Infohiway's cut-and-paste Javascript, and the Javascript Forms Library.


Commercial form builders

• WebForms example - $34.95.  Here's what the email output looks like -- back to ugly output, unless you use their "WebFormsTM Response Reader" module.  This is not the easiest program to use unless you understand form codes well.  (Click here for screen shot.)  For more info see Q&D Software's webpage.  The same company sells a Java Applet for creating forms called Form-Let ($19).

Back to Main Page