E-mail this pageCreating an E-mail Form
Submission forms can be used for almost any purpose: you can use them to collect survey results, to provide students with a means of emailing you, to provide a submission mechanism for online assignments, etc.
Putting together a submission form in FrontPage is a task that involves multiple steps, but once you've performed them a few times, you'll find that the process becomes fairly automatic.
Creating the form
Create a new page in FrontPage (or open a page on which you'd like the form to appear).
Click the Insert menu item and select Form|One Line Text Box . This will insert a one-line text box into a form and add "Submit" and "Reset" buttons for the form.
Using the arrow keys on the keyboard, position the cursor inside the form to the left of the text box and type "Name:" or whatever you'd like to use to identify the name of the person submitting the form. Your form should now look something like this:
Next, use the arrow keys to position the cursor to the right of the text box and press SHIFT+ENTER. This will insert a single line. Type the word "E-mail: " and then insert another one-line text box, again using the menu to select Insert|Form|One Line Text Box . Your form should now look like this:
Your next step will be to add a scrolling text box to the form, to allow for some sort of comment or other submission. Use the arrow keys to position the cursor to the right of the e-mail text box, and then press SHIFT+ENTER. This will insert a single line. Type "Essay:" (or "Assignment:" or "Submission:" or some word to identify the type of submission the viewer is expected to supply). Press SHIFT+ENTER again to position the cursor for the insertion of a scrolling text box.
From the Insert menu, select Form|Scrolling Text Box . This will insert a scrolling text box. Press SHIFT+ENTER to move the "Submit" and "Reset" buttons beneath the input fields.
Click once on the scrolling text box to reveal the sizing handles (the eight selection points that make resizing possible). Enlarge the input box by dragging the lower left sizing handle down and to the left.
Your form should now be laid out roughly as illustrated below:
Note : If you're using a stylesheet, you have to take special pains to ensure that there are no paragraph tags inside your form: use only line breaks (SHIFT+ENTER). Netscape gets all stupid and confused if it sees a paragraph tag in a form. Sometimes, you'll have to edit the HTML code directly to replace the p tags with br tags.
Setting the Input Field Properties: Validating Input
When your form is submitted to you, you'll want the results to be readable and you'll also want to ensure that necessary information isn't omitted. To do so, you'll want to ensure that you've set a few parameters in the fields on the form.
On your form, double-click on the single line text box beside the label "Name:" to reveal the "Text Box Properties" dialog window.
In the "Name" field, type "Name" (or any other single word identifier for the box).
Click the "Validate" button on the right side of the dialog window to reveal a "Text Box Validation" dialog.
In this dialog window, under the heading of "Data Length," click on the checkbox marked "Required"--this will ensure that no forms are submitted with a blank name field. Then click on OK to close the "Text Box Validation" window, and click on OK to close the "Text Box Properties" window.
Perform the same steps to set the name and validation properties of the "Email" text box, but name this text box "email."
Double-click on the scrolling text box to introduce the "Scrolling Text Box Properties" dialog. In the "Name" field, type a one-word identifier for the scrolling text box ("Essay" or "Submission" would do). If you want to ensure that the form is never submitted while blank, set the Validation option. Then click the OK button.
Your form should now be pretty much as you'd want it to be. The only remaining steps have to do with ensuring that the "Submit" button will appropriately mail you the form results.
Setting the action of the "Submit" button
The final steps involved in creating your form involve setting the actions to be performed by the "Submit" button.
Double-click on the "Submit" button to reveal the "Push Button Properties" dialog:
Type a one-word name for the button into the "Name" field. This isn't particularly important--the word "SubmitThis" is as good as anything else, and the default (B1) isn't really all that tragic either. (No two buttons on the same page should share the same name, so be careful if you're creating more than one form on a page). Click the OK button to dismiss the dialog when you're finished.
Finally, you can right-click on a blank area of the form to stipulate what you'd like to do with the form results. From the popup menu that appears, select Form Properties .
In the field marked "Where to store results", select the "Send to" option, delete the contents in the "File Name" field (if any contents are there), and in the "E-mail Address" field, type your full campus e-mail address. Type a name for the form ("EssayForm," for instance) beside the "Form Name" caption.
After you've completed that step, click on the "Options" button to introduce a window entitled "Options for Saving Results of a Form." Since you're going to have the form results e-mailed to you, you should click on the second tab in that dialog--E-mail Results .
Your e-mail address should appear in the field entitled "E-mail Address to Receive Results." In the field which allows you to set the "E-mail Message Header," it's a good idea to pre-define the subject line for the e-mail message--"Response from Web Essay Assignment," for instance. This sort of pre-set subject line will help you to recognize course submissions amidst your other e-mail messages, as all submissions will have the same subject line. After you've set the "Subject Line" field, type the name you gave to the form's e-mail textbox ("email") into the "Reply-to Line" field, and make sure that the "Form Field Name" box (immediately above) is checked. This will ensure that all form results that are sent will allow you to reply to the e-mail address entered by the sender.
Next, click on the tab marked "Saved Fields."
In the list of "Form Fields to Save," select and remove the name of the button--there's no need to have that piece of information sent along to you every time a form is submitted. You may want to set entries in the Date Format and Time Format fields, though--doing so will automatically timestamp all submissions. There's some redundancy in adding time and date stamps when the form results are to be e-mailed, though, as the e-mailed submission will already be marked by the time and date it was sent. You may also want to put a checkmark into the fields under Additional Information to save : these fields will let you know the browser being used by the form submitter, the IP address of the computer being used ("remote computer name"), and, if the visitor has logged onto our network, the visitor's username.
Without exiting the "Options for Saving Results of a Form" dialog, click on the "Confirmation Page" tab. FrontPage will automatically generate a generic confirmation page and a generic validation failure warning if the fields on this page are left blank. If you want to create links to a confirmation page (or a validation failure page) of your own, you can do so form this menu. (You can always come back to insert this information at a later time if you remember how you got to this menu!)
Once you've completed these steps, you can close all open dialog boxes by clicking the OK button(s) until the dialogs go away.
Presto! Your form is ready for use on the WWW server.
Please note that the forms illustrated on this page are visual guides only.
The actual forms on this page are inactive.
Comments or questions? Please contact Dr. Peter Friesen , Instructional Technology Coordinator, Plattsburgh State University.