Hi!

I am designing my own "Contact the Webmaster" form via Form Builder.

Probably a good 25% of my target audience has no idea what the "Captcha" is. So I want to put a little link/button/"other" next to the captcha box.

Here's what I hope to do:

CAPTCHA
BOX ........ What's this and why do I have to type in a key?

Resulting pop up (or mouse over):

This little thing is called a "Captcha" box. When you type in the correct key, you have shown that you're an actual living person, and not a web robot (sometimes called a "bot").

Web Robots are often used to send junk email. The webmaster already gets too much junk email. Besides, he likes talking to real people, and not bots!


I would also like to have the "popup" window be small and easy to close. In fact, it would be best if the popup didn't obscure any of my form, so that the person could just set their cursor and begin typing, thereby closing the popup message.



I have the whole CoffeeCup product bundle. I shouldn't need a lot of hand-holding for this one...just a hint or two would be fantastic, and if I get stuck, I'll come back for more info!

Thanks in advance!

Hi,
The form builder creates several types of files that work together to create the form that is visible on the web browser. I don't think that mouseovers and pop-ups are part of the program, so there won't be any way to put them onto the form page itself. If you over-simplify the problem, how about just adding a block of text above, below or even beside the captcha box with your explanation? No pop-up (too many people are scared of pop-ups anyway), no extra windows to close and YOU get to control where the text is, so it will never interfear with your form due to screen sizes, cusotm DPI setting or different monitor resolutions. Eveyone wins.

Your other option is to create a web page that has the same background as your form. Then, end the form right after the captcha/submit area and now you can put links, mouseovers or even a DHTML window that you can create using the DHTML window designer tool found in the HTML editor onto the page, and have that pop up wherever you tell it to. It will have an "X" to close the window, and you can customize it to look like it belongs on the page.

Thank you for the ideas. I generally like the idea of having less clutter on the screen, and that includes lengthy explanations...unless asked for by the user.

I will take a look at your suggestions tonight!

This feature is very common on website forms for all fields on the form. See MachForm as an example. Form Builder is really missing this feature.

I for example am trying to build an insurance quote form which needs somewhat lengthly explainations for many of the fields.

Hope this can be added to the program.

I have used pop up boxes in several sites, though I have to say that I used the HTML Editor for all my work. A pop up box will work with a snippet of javascript code which will make a smaller version of your message page appear.
Quite rightly, as Cliff says, you will make a separate page with your message, and have a link which will open up the new page in a small version. You can actually position this on your screen wherever you want it, and as soon as your user clicks back on the original page, the pop up will disappear.
The drawback is that a lot of browsers now give users the option to block pop ups, so unless you also add a note about keeping javascript enabled, the pop up would not work.
You can find all the necessary code and instructions for a pop up window in the HTML Editor javascript snippets. Otherwise, if you have seen other web sites on the net which use the kind of window you have in mind, take a look at their source code and see how they have achieved the effect.