Dreamweaver MX User Guide PDF of Forms as they

							                                                                            Dreamweaver MX 2004 User Guide
                                                                                                 PDF 19 of 20
                                                                               Forms (as they are done at the
                                                                                      University of Leicester)


Quick Note: Throughout these guides there are multiple references to menu paths you should take in order to accomplish a
particular task. In the interests of clarity, whenever a menu path is outlined, in addition to writing a long description i.e. “Go
to the ‘file’ menu and then choose the ‘new page’ option and then choose the ‘open’ option”, these guides will also use a
summary bold form like this: File > New Page > Open.

Forms (as they are done at the University of Leicester)

The first thing you do when you want to create a form on a page in Dreamweaver is add a ‘Form area’ to the page – box
(with a red dashed border), within which you will put your response boxes, questions and the submit/reset buttons. To add a
‘form area’ you need to go to the Insert menu, choose Form, and then choose Form again and a box will appear on your page
(see figure 1).

Insert > Form > Form

Put your cursor inside this box and hit return a few times and the box will expand to give you space to put your first question
and its associated response box.




Figure 1

To add response boxes, drop down menus, radio buttons, check boxes, etc you need to go to the Insert menu, choose
Form and then pick the appropriate item from the list. You can see example of these question types in figure 1.

Insert > Form > Choose from list

To add text to a form just put the cursor where you want the text and start typing, as you would with a normal web page.



Tip: Some people use a table within their form area to help organise the boxes and text into neat columns (see figure 1 for
an example).




                                                                                      Ben Coulthard – Computer Centre - Page 1
                                                                            Dreamweaver MX 2004 User Guide
                                                                                                 PDF 19 of 20
                                                                               Forms (as they are done at the
                                                                                      University of Leicester)


Once you’ve added all your boxes and questions, you’ll also need to add at the very minimum a ‘submit’ button, which you
can get by going to the Insert menu, choosing Form and then choosing Button.

Insert > Form > Button

You’ll be given the option to specify, via the properties bar, what kind of button you want it to be – but by default it will be a
submit button (see figure 2). You can also change the label which appears on the button – which would be useful if you
wanted some custom text e.g. “Submit your enquiry”. The other type of button is a ‘reset’ button – this clears the form of
answers, which can be helpful if your respondent has made a mistake and wants to start filling the form in again.




Figure 2

Bringing your form in line with University regulations (quick summary)

When your form is visually the way you want it you’ll need to make some final amendments to bring it in line with the
university system for online forms.

Firstly, you’ll need to make sure you’ve given all your form elements proper fieldnames (done by selecting a box and typing
a name in the properties bar). Field names should be lowercase, descriptive and contain no gaps or unusual characters
e.g. address, surname, telephone, question1

Secondly you’ll need to configure the form’s html parameters so that it sends itself to the right location.

You should visit http://www.le.ac.uk/cc/www/authoring/forms/index.html for specific details. But you can see a correct
example in figure 3. You need to change the html <form> tag parameters until you have a version of the following two lines:

<form name="form1" method="post" action="/cgi-bin/mailform2">
<input type="hidden" name="formname" value="xx_yourformsname">

XX_formname in the example needs to be replaced by your two letter department code, an underscore and then a suitable
form name, nothing else needs to be altered.




Figure 3
When your form is ready to go and has been published to the web, then you need to contact the CWIS Officer at the
Computer Centre (cwis@le.ac.uk) and your form will be configured so that it works with the University’s server setup.

You will need to tell the Computer Centre where the form has been published to on the server (web page address), who the
recipient of the form should be and what simple format you would like the data in, when you receive the email from the
form i.e. a string, a list, etc.




                                                                                      Ben Coulthard – Computer Centre - Page 2