Re: What's missing from HTML forms?

Chris Lilley, Computer Graphics Unit (lilley@v5.cgu.mcc.ac.uk)
Fri, 30 Sep 1994 13:58:40 GMT


In message <9409291948.AA28653@ka.reg.uci.edu> Richard Everman wrote:

>What's missing from HTML forms?

>1 -- pressing a (tab?) key to move from current field to next field
> (or is that a client issue???)

Yes, it's completely a client-side issue.

>2 -- valid an entry (FAVLT: from a very large table) for correctness

OK so either you send the validation table as part of the document, and the
client uses it (this is in effect sending the client a program to execute) or
you send the entry to a server to validate (which implies the server maintaining
some sort of state on the completion of the rest of the form.) Either way, yes,
it's currently missing.

Multi-document forms are possible but a bit of a pain. Take a look at

http://www.lpac.qmw.ac.uk/SEL-HPC/Questionnaire/JiscQuest_man.html

which uses a form split over four documents. It does not do validation, but the
multi-document structure would allow individual chunks to be rejected and
returned for valid completion. It uses hidden fields to save state. No, I didn't
write it.

--
Chris