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These instructions are for FP 2000/2002 and are not meant for the older
versions of FP or for FrontPage Express (which is a totally different program). The
screen shots and instructions come from FP 2002, but I've made many a form in
2000 and it's pretty much the same.
Many people criticize FrontPage and say it creates bad HTML code and is incapable
of doing advanced stuff. Well, I'm a big fan of FrontPage myself, so I
decided it's time for me to show all you HTML coders and Dreamweaver users just
what FP can do.
The one minor drawback is that for the Form components to work, your
hosting server must include FrontPage extensions. Nowadays, most domain
hosts do include these, although they are not always installed by default.
Therefore, you may have to put in a request to have them installed on your site. If
you are going to use FrontPage to make your web pages and want to use it's convenient
features, it's a good idea to first find a host that uses these extensions.
Many of the free web hosting services now include FrontPage extensions,
also. For a complete list of these hosts, check out this listing:
http://accessfp.net/freefp.htm.
Let's say you want to add a feedback form to your website so people
can fill in information and submit it to you via email. For this exercise, you
can either just open a blank page in FP or you can add a new page to your existing
FP Web. Once you have the blank page open, follow these step-by-step instructions:
- Go to the Insert menu, choose Form. Note the submenu that
pops out. If you grab this submenu by the top edge, you can drag it
off and make a free floating toolbar so you don't need to keep returning to
this menu every time you want to add a component to your form.
- If you choose to drag the menu off, the toolbar will look like the image
below. You can then either move it to a convenient location on your screen
or drag it up to the top of your screen and dock it there with your other
toolbars.
Notice, if you hover your mouse pointer over any button, a ToolTip
pops up to tell you what the button does.
- Click on the Form button at the left end of the Form Toolbar and
you will see that two buttons will be inserted into your page. By default,
one will say Submit, and one will say Reset.
- Make sure your insertion point (flashing cursor) is blinking to the
left of the Submit button and hit your Enter key on your
keyboard a couple times to move the Submit and Reset buttons
to the bottom of the form and give you room within the form to add some information
and fields.
I'm not going to explain how all of the form Controls work, since
this eZine is owned by Dian Chapman and there are tutorials all over her website
which provide details for building AutoForms
in Word. Word forms use controls very similar to what you use in these
web forms. You can use these AutoForm tutorials as a reference for form design,
as well as learn more about how these Controls work and how to set their options.
Add Controls to your form. Then simply type in the necessary data. You
can add textboxes, checkboxes, dropdown lists, radio buttons, etc., as needed.
Also, format your background and fonts as you normally would for any
FP page or just use the same theme or template that you used for your other
pages. Feel free to add tables to your form to align things more consistently.
Also, note that by double clicking on any form control, the Properties
box for that control will be displayed. (See the Word AutoForm tutorials
above for details about these properties, as they're very similar to Word's
controls.) Just be sure that everything you want included in the form
is within the dotted lines you'll see on your screen once you have inserted
the Form. Eventually your form should look something like this:
NOTE! Whenever you go into the Properties of any control, you
will see a Name box. This is where you must type what you want
to see in the email that is sent to you when this form is submitted. For example,
I named the group for the top three radio buttons Gender and I named
the three individual radio buttons, Male, Female and Other,
respectively. This is important so the email makes sense when you receive
it.
- Once the form is complete, right click somewhere inside the
Form and select Form Properties. Click on the button at the bottom
that says Options and you will see the Saving Results dialog
box where you can choose File Results to save to a file on your website
or Email Results to receive an email which shows what people typed
into the form. Click on the E-Mail Results tab and enter an email
address, choose what type of format you would like for the email,
and give the email a subject line.
- You can also configure the Confirmation Page users will see once
they Submit the form. FP includes a default confirmation page or you
can create another page in your web and select it in here by clicking on the
Confirmation Page tab and browsing to it.
Click OK to get back to your form.
- If you do not have FP extensions installed on your hard drive,
you will see the box below telling you that the email option won't work. I
assure you the email option will work once you publish your form to
a server that does have the extensions installed. Just be
sure to click NO, so FP doesn't remove your email address.
Now, simply publish your site to the web and go try out your form. If you've
done everything correctly, it should look
something like this and if you complete the form and submit it, you will
see your Confirmation Page and soon receive an email that looks similar to
this:
And that's all there is to it. I promise you, if you can handle forms
in Word, forms in FrontPage are a walk in the park.
For more tips, see Linda's Computer Stop at: http://personal-computer-tutor.com
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