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Neatness Counts
With Forms
One of the more
tedious aspects of form development is going into Form Field Properties
of all the Form Fields, and properly naming the fields, and
selecting or completing the other options. But the better you do this job,
the more useful your results will be to you.
 The
Field Names cannot contain spaces. Use the underscore ( _ ) in place
of the space, or skip the space and use a capital letter to indicate the
start of the next word.
When we created a
form using the wizard, FrontPage named all the form fields for you. You
should go back and change the names to something more meaningful than D1
or T3. The reasons are shown below.
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This
first illustration is an example of the comma separated value (CSV) file
that FrontPage creates for you. This file will open in Notepad or
Excel, and can be imported into Microsoft Outlook, ACT, or QuickBooks.
Make sure the names make sense, it will be easier to map your fields
when you import the records.
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 This
is an illustration of the e-mail that your web site will send you immediately
after your visitor has completed the form and clicked the Submit
button.
You can
see the benefit of using plain English field names.
Go back
to the forms you have created, and make sure that all the form fields
are named appropriately.
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Hands on Practice - The Form Properties Dialog
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 The
Form Properties determine how the information gathered is recorded or
displayed. It is possible to have FrontPage display the
information on a web page. You might do this if you are running a
site that is like a blog and allows for visitor feedback or
contributions. If you want to create this type of site, though, it
would be easier to create it using a web site template.
Typically, you will want to collect the information and keep it private
for your own use. Now
we are going to learn how to tell the web server what to do with the
information gathered in the form.
Step 1
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Step 2
When the
Form Properties dialog opens, take a moment to notice the
options. You can click on the Help
 icon
to display this information in FrontPage.
Where to
store results
Send to Saves the data by using a Microsoft
FrontPage form handler. You can save the data to a file in the active
Web site or your file system, or you can save it as an e-mail message
that is sent to an e-mail address you specify. To use a FrontPage form
handler, you must host your Web site on a server that is running the
FrontPage Server Extensions from Microsoft and the extensions must be
configured for e-mail.
File name Type the path and file name of the
file you want the form handler to store the data in, or click
Browse to locate the file. This option is available
only if the Send to option is selected.
E-mail address Type the e-mail address you
want the form handler to send the data to. This option is available only
if the Send to option is selected.
S end
to database Sends the data to an Open Database Connectivity
(ODBC)–compliant database you specify.
Send to other Sends the data to a custom
script or a registration or discussion form handler. In the
Send to other box, click the script or form handler
option you want.
Form
properties
Form name Type the name of the form.
Target frame Displays the name of the frame
in which you want to display the form confirmation or error page. To
change the frame, click the button next to the Target
frame box, and then select the frame you want.
Form direction Click to select the direction
of text in the form. This option is available only if you have enabled
support for multiple languages in FrontPage.
Options Click to specify which data you want
to collect and how and where you want to store that data. You can also
specify the address of form confirmation and error pages, which open
after a site visitor successfully or unsuccessfully submits data in the
form. If the form sends data to a database, you can also specify the
connection settings for the database. If the form sends data to a custom
script, you can specify an action, method, and encoding type for the
custom form handler.
Advanced Click to add, remove, or change the
properties of hidden fields in the form. |
 Step
3
- Change the filename to
_private/orderform.csv.
- Add your e-mail address so form results are sent
to you.
- Name the form.
- Click on Options. This opens the
Saving Results dialog, below.
- If you see the following error message, select NO.
We do not want to remove the e-mail recipient.
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Step 4
Click on the File Results tab. You can change or
select your file name, and add an additional file type if you wish.
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Click on the E-mail Results tab. In addition to
adding your e-mail address, you can title the subject line
of the e-mail so you can see that it is from your site.
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Click on the Confirmation Page tab. You can redirect
form users to a confirmation or failure page that you would need to
design and add to your site, of course.
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Click on the Saved Fields tab. This list shows the
field names that your form will save. Additionally, you can add
date and time information to the form submission.
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- Click on OK on the Saved Results dialog, and
then click OK on the Form Properties dialog.
- When the error message is displayed, click on NO.
- Your form is now ready to go.
Eventually you
will want to collect the forms data from your web site. This is easily
done in FrontPage.
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Open
FrontPage
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Open the
web site on the server (http://www.mysite.com)
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Enter
your user ID and password
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Look in
the Folder List on the left side of the screen. Click on the +
sign next to the folder named _private.
FrontPage creates other names for database files coming from
forms pages, and you have the option of naming this file
yourself. Anything in the _private folder is data collection
from web site forms.
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Right
click on the file that holds your results, in your case it is
inforeq.txt.
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From the
Contact Menu box that opens select Open With...
The menu will expand, if Microsoft Office Excel
is visible, choose that program, if not click on Choose
Program at the bottom of the menu and select MS Excel
from the choices. You can also open this in Notepad, or Word,
but you will lose the column order.
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Excel
will launch, and a User ID and Password box will open, use the
one for your web site. The file will open. you may need to
expand some of the columns to read the information in them,
especially the Comments Column. Position your cursor on the
line between the column letters or row number until the two way
arrow appears, then click, hold and drag to open the column or
row.
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To save
this file locally, in Excel, click on File, Save As,
and when the Save Window opens browse to My Documents, and any
folder you want to save this in, type the file name you want in
the File Name box and click on the Save Button.
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