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FORM - HTML forms


This element is also available in our updated HTML 4 reference. Some characteristics may have changed.

Appearance: <FORM ACTION=URL> </FORM>
Attributes: ACTION=URL, METHOD=get|post, ENCTYPE=string
Contents: H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6, P, UL, OL, DIR, MENU, PRE, DL, DIV, CENTER, BLOCKQUOTE, HR, TABLE, ADDRESS as well as TT, I, B, U, STRIKE, BIG, SMALL, SUB, SUP, EM, STRONG, DFN, CODE, SAMP, KBD, VAR, CITE, A, APPLET, IMG, FONT, BASEFONT, BR, MAP, INPUT, SELECT, TEXTAREA and plain text.
May occur in: BODY, DIV, CENTER, BLOCKQUOTE, TH, TD and DD, LI.

Forms allow a person to send data to the WWW server. You can use the INPUT, TEXTAREA and SELECT tags to add individual elements, such as checkboxes, input fields or "drop down" lists to your form. A form may contain all markup (both text and body level tags), but it may not have a nested form.

FORM has one required attribute, ACTION, specifying the URL of a CGI script which processes the form and sends back feedback. There are two methods to send form data to a server. GET, the default, will send the form input in an URL, whereas POST sends it in the body of the submission. The latter method means you can send larger amounts of data, and that the URL of the form results doesn't show the encoded form.

You can specify an encoding type with ENCTYPE, the default of "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" is most widely supported. An alternative is "text/plain", which is typically used in combination when the ACTION attribute points to a mailto: URL. If a browser supports both, the contents of the form is sent in plain text to the indicated recipient.

Notes:

HTML 3.2 Reference  ~ Elements by Function  ~ Elements Alphabetically


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