Forms

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by Aaron West

Forms can be created in Dreamweaver with either the Objects Palette or from the Insert Menu.

Go to the Window Menu and select Objects or use the keyboard shortcut Command or CTRL F2. When you see the Objects Palette, change the pull down menu at the top to Forms.

Your Form Objects palette should look like this:

You can now just click on the appropriate button in order to place a new form object on your page.

Before you place your first form object on the page, you need to insert a form tag. This can be confusing to some, but all form objects must reside inside a defined form tag. In fact, if you try to place a form object without a form, you'll get the following dialog box:

You can add a form tag either from the Form Objects Palette or from the Insert Menu. Click on the upper left button on the palette to create your form. Once you have done so you will see a red bounding box.

You will also notice that the Properties Toolbar has changed:

There are three fields you must fill out in order to activate your form. The form name is not necessary, but usually recommended, depending on what the form is used for. The action field is where the information in the form will be submitted to. This can be to anything from an e-mail address to a CGI file. The Method field determines how the data in the form is processed. POST usually means that the data is sent to a file and GET usually means that the data is appended to a URL. The default is POST.

Another way to insert a form is from the Insert Menu. Some people prefer to keep their workplace as uncluttered as possible. All one has to do is select Form from the insert menu, which will insert the form tag. To insert form objects, there is a submenu off the insert menu for just that purpose.

So now you should be ready to start placing objects into your form. Over the next couple of sections we'll look at the different objects available.

Learn more about Forms at this section of the HTML Tutorial.

Indents and Outdents

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