HTML tutorial - HTML for forms and extended tags

HTML for forms and extended tags

Here's a summary of the tags that you'll need to use for creating forms on your web pages, plus some of the common extensions to HTML that will be supported by a range of browsers.

Form tags

<form method=post action="URL">: Define a form, the data from which will be passed to URL, which should be a script, when the form is completed. 'method' can also be set to 'get', but post is recommended.
</form>: End of form definition. Multiple forms can be present on a single page
<input name="var_1"> or <input name="var_1" type="text">: Define a text entry field, the result of which will be stored in a variable called var_1
<input name="var_2" value="default">: A text field, stored in var_2, with a default value of 'default'
<input name="var_3" type="radio" value="val_1">: Define a radio button, with results stored in var_3. This button will return the value 'val_1' You can have as many tags as you like with the same name, but with different values, and only one can be selected
<input name="var_4 type="password">: A text entry field, but the value typed in will not be displayed on the screen
<input name="var_5" type="checkbox">: A simple checkbox, which will set var_5 to either 'on' or 'off' depending on whether or not it's been checked
<select name="var_6"> ... </select>: Define a drop down list of options. Each <option> must appear within the select tags
<option>Option 1: An option for a drop down selection list. The text 'Option 1' will appear on the list
<option selected>Option 2: A pre-selected option on a drop down list
<textarea name="var_6" rows=10 cols=30>...</textarea>: Define a space for entering a large amount of text, to be stored in var_6. The area will be 10 rows (lines) by 30 columns, though the text can be longer. Default text can appear between the start and end tags.
<input type="submit">: A button to submit the completed for to the web server. If a 'value=' section is included, it will be used to label the button, which will otherwise say 'Submit'
<input type="reset">: A button to reset the form, as if you had just loaded the page. The button will normally be labelled 'Reset' unless the 'value=' section is included.

Fields of type "password" and "text" can have an additional option, 'size=' which limits the number of characters that can be displayed in the field to that specified. The 'maxlength=' option specifies the maximum number of characters than can be entered.

Extensions to existing tags

<body background="bg.gif">: Use the file bg.gif as a background to the current document
<img width=72 height=72>: Specify the width and height of an image in a document. Percentages can also be specified