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Chapter 6: Form Fundamentals

A form is a section of an HTML document that is marked by <form> tags (what else?). A form always contains two things and usually a third:

• Input elements where the user enters information, such as a text box for entering text or a check box for selecting an option.
• A Submit button that the user clicks to send the information to its destination.
• An optional Reset button that clears the form.

Figure 6-1 shows what a simple form looks like. This form has two text boxes, one check box, and submit and reset buttons. A Web page can contain multiple forms, each one being completely independent of the others.
Figure 6-1. A Simple HTML form.

Much of the power of HTML forms comes from the fact that you can control how the data is submitted. It can be placed in an email message and sent to a specified address, or it can be sent to a specialized program on the server that will process the data (for example, inserting it into a database).