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JackWolfgang
Mon., Apr. 17, 2006, 9:17 pm
I have a contact form that was written for me, and then I re-wrote it to get it out of Table-based design world. In the process, I added labels to the required fields. There is the text "(required)" which is hidden by CSS in the field label, and there is a bold red asterisk next to each required field control.

Here's the example:
http://contact.tristatecamp.org/

My question is, should the required field indicator be done something like this:

<div class="formLine">
<div class="formLabel">
<label for="message">
Message:
<abbr class="ReqFldMarker" title="(required)">*</abbr>&nbsp;&nbsp;
</label>
</div>
<div class="formControl">
<textarea id="message" name="message" rows="15" cols="70">
</textarea>
</div>
</div>

Instead of like this:

<div class="formLine">
<div class="formLabel">
<label for="message">
Message
<span class="ReqFldText"> (Required)</span>:&nbsp;&nbsp;
</label>
</div>
<div class="formControl">
<textarea id="message" name="message" rows="15" cols="70">
</textarea>
<span class="ReqFldMarker">*</span>
</div>
</div>

Edit: Now why on earth did it strip most of my HTML code?

OK, I got it entered back in.
Faithhb_lutheran
Wed., Apr. 19, 2006, 12:45 am
Jack,

From what I understand about the abbreviation tag the only real benefit would be to work better with a script. There is no real front end benefit of one way over the other that I know of it's just personal preference.


Ok dummy opened his big mouth before pulling out his reference book. I have a note that both the (abbr) and (acronym) tags

"with the title attribute set, Opera and Mozilla may render a dotted underline useful to suggest the tooltip that might contain a definition for the word."

So I guess there is a front end benefit with using it.

Warning historical perspective below:)

Side note- Remember everyone that HTML is a language built for academia, some of the tags were meant to serve no purpose outside of the archiving of massive reasearch projects. (but that doesn't mean we can't find new things to do with them;))
xhtml
Wed., Apr. 19, 2006, 7:23 am
Jack;

You might want to save this example form page (http://chrysler.websitewelcome.com/%7Eevasser/formtest/) (based on your form fields) and see what you can do with it. Experiment with styles, or whatever. What little styling I applied to it is in the <head>. Something to play around with.
flutem3
Wed., Apr. 19, 2006, 1:50 pm
Ed wrote:

"You might want to save this example form page (http://chrysler.websitewelcome.com/%7Eevasser/formtest/) (based on your form fields) and see what you can do with it. Experiment with styles, or whatever. What little styling I applied to it is in the <head>. Something to play around with."

Hi, Ed,

What a wonderfully simple form. Since I have been reading what everyone has been saying, I decided to use a "contact us" form instead of the email addresses for the church etc.

It did not occur to me to make it so simple. It should have because I have fumed (just a little bit) over forms that ask everything except the day of your death.

This is a great way to go. Thanks for posting the information. In two years we have not had anyone contact me or the church through the website. Is that common place, or do all of you get lots of email on church websites? Just curious.

Thanks again.

Carol
Faithhb_lutheran
Thu., Apr. 20, 2006, 3:22 am
Carol,

lots of spam YES :mad:

lots of actual communication not so much, but if someone does want to get in contact with us I want to make it as easy as possible.
JackWolfgang
Thu., Apr. 20, 2006, 11:53 am
Carol,

lots of spam YES :mad:

lots of actual communication not so much, but if someone does want to get in contact with us I want to make it as easy as possible.

Ditto that on lots of spam. That's why one of the first things I did after taking over our church web site is to replace the e-mail links with contact forms. The spamming spiders can't use the forms, and if you do them right, they can't extract the e-mail address either.
JackWolfgang
Thu., Apr. 20, 2006, 11:58 am
Jack;

You might want to save this example form page (http://chrysler.websitewelcome.com/%7Eevasser/formtest/) (based on your form fields) and see what you can do with it. Experiment with styles, or whatever. What little styling I applied to it is in the <head>. Something to play around with.

That is very nice, and may be borrowing the ideas there in the near future.
JackWolfgang
Thu., Apr. 20, 2006, 12:01 pm
Jack,

From what I understand about the abbreviation tag the only real benefit would be to work better with a script. There is no real front end benefit of one way over the other that I know of it's just personal preference.


Ok dummy opened his big mouth before pulling out his reference book. I have a note that both the (abbr) and (acronym) tags

"with the title attribute set, Opera and Mozilla may render a dotted underline useful to suggest the tooltip that might contain a definition for the word."

So I guess there is a front end benefit with using it.

Warning historical perspective below:)

Side note- Remember everyone that HTML is a language built for academia, some of the tags were meant to serve no purpose outside of the archiving of massive reasearch projects. (but that doesn't mean we can't find new things to do with them;))

The other benefit of the ABBR and ACRONYM tags is that Google indexes the title attribute as well as the abbreviation.

See: http://diveintoaccessibility.org/day_17_defining_acronyms.html
flutem3
Thu., Apr. 20, 2006, 12:03 pm
Carol,

lots of spam YES :mad:

lots of actual communication not so much, but if someone does want to get in contact with us I want to make it as easy as possible.


Hi, Kyle,

We don't get any spam either. The contact on the Prayer Room page is open to anyone. It is not used a lot, but it is used. The worst that has happened on that one is having a couple of people send blank pages so we prayed for them...whoever they were.

The way I will be setting it up is that all information will come to me. Then if something terrible comes through, I can weed it out. Our pastors do not have their email address published on the website and don't want to even through the church which I find weird. Neither one of them check their email frequently. Both are very good with computers. Chris can build them.
Anyway, I am grateful for such a simple form. And I hope more people will contact us.

Carol
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flutem3
Thu., Apr. 20, 2006, 12:20 pm
Jack wrote:

"The spamming spiders can't use the forms, and if you do them right, they can't extract the e-mail address either."

Hi, Jack,

How do you define "do them right?" I didn't realize that there is a wrong way to do the contact form. Please, fill me in. :D

Another similar question is this: If a person uses Bcc in sending information to a list of people, is that safer from the spiders than using Cc? I have heard that it is. I know that it is safer as far as other people seeing all those to whom the information has been sent and prevents a nefarious soul on the list from getting hold of all the addresses.

Thanks.

Carol
JackWolfgang
Thu., Apr. 20, 2006, 9:29 pm
How do you define "do them right?" I didn't realize that there is a wrong way to do the contact form. Please, fill me in. :D

Do it right means that the e-mail address is no where to be found in the HTML. If you look at the source of the form (http://contact.tristatecamp.org/) that I initially posted, you can't find the e-mail address in there, even encrypted. Therefore, there is nothing for the spammer to swipe.

Another similar question is this: If a person uses Bcc in sending information to a list of people, is that safer from the spiders than using Cc? I have heard that it is. I know that it is safer as far as other people seeing all those to whom the information has been sent and prevents a nefarious soul on the list from getting hold of all the addresses.

Yes, a spammer will use a list of addresses regardless of how he gets it, via e-mail or via his spiders. Therefore, BCC is much better than CC.
flutem3
Thu., Apr. 20, 2006, 9:48 pm
[quote=JackWolfgang]Do it right means that the e-mail address is no where to be found in the HTML. If you look at the source of the form (http://contact.tristatecamp.org/) that I initially posted, you can't find the e-mail address in there, even encrypted. Therefore, there is nothing for the spammer to swipe.

Hi, Jack,

Thank you very much. I know these are basic questions, but they are important for me to know. I was certain I was right about the Bcc and have been trying to get the church staff to use it instead of Cc. So far, I have had no luck. They don't seem to think it is worth it...or that I know what I am talking about. I don't know which...or whether they don't know how and think it would be difficult to learn. Who knows?

I know you don't like Homestead, but after I set up a contact page and have it active, can I just disconnect all the addresses I have set up now...like the one to me and the church for example. Will they then disappear from the HTML in the WYSIWYG HTML? And if they don't, how do I get rid of them.

I am working on it Jack. :D I appreciate everyone's help and expertise...and willingness...and patience!

Carol
JackWolfgang
Fri., Apr. 21, 2006, 10:23 am
I know you don't like Homestead, but after I set up a contact page and have it active, can I just disconnect all the addresses I have set up now...like the one to me and the church for example. Will they then disappear from the HTML in the WYSIWYG HTML? And if they don't, how do I get rid of them.

I am working on it Jack. :D I appreciate everyone's help and expertise...and willingness...and patience!

I don't recall saying I didn't like Homestead, but I have never used it. My preference is to work in something like a text editor on steroids (the steroids causing things like intelligent indenting and coloring of different elements of the code).

The Tri-State contact form was done in PHP, which is a server-side web scripting language. The e-mail addresses are stored in an array that the machine can read, but the web surfers cannot. When I went to Netcraft (http://netcraft.com/) and used their "What's that site running?" tool on your site, I find (http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.wabashfirstumc.org) that it's run on Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS). It's possible to run PHP on IIS, but normally, PHP is found on Apache hosts (Apache and IIS are two software packages used to run web servers).

You can contact your web hosting company, see if PHP is installed for your web hosting package, and if it is, I would be happy to help you set up contact forms like the ones I am using. I have installed them both on Apache (less difficult) and IIS (more difficult).

If PHP is not available, someone might be able to help you set up contact forms that would work on your web host.
flutem3
Fri., Apr. 21, 2006, 11:56 am
Hi, Jack,

My goodness, you sent me a wealth of information there. I didn't mean that you specifically didn't like Homestead, but people who know HTML seem not to like it. Of course, lots of people use it too.

Anyway, I will check out the stuff you said to check out. There are many features to the software. I still have not uncovered all of them. However, it works for me.

At any rate, thanks so much for your information. I will see what I can find out. I will save your information in a file all of its own!

Carol
flutem3
Fri., Apr. 28, 2006, 2:57 pm
Hey, youse people there,

I have been listening to you talking about having a "contact us" page. I have made one. Would a couple of you check it out and let me know if you think it is okay? I would appreciate that. Not everything is hooked into it yet, but the index page is. the URL is:

www.wabashfirstumc.org/contact_us.html (http://www.wabashfirstumc.org/contact_us.html)

Thanks a lot.

Carol
PS Out of defference to what everyone is saying about HTML, I have checked out the source codes on a number of people's pages. I am here to announce that to my dying day I would not get all of that learned. I should have started when I was 40. Then I might have had a chance. But I am learning to use HTML more and more as ridiculous as that sounds. I have become adept at using even very long snippets on our website. I am making progress despite everything.
Faithhb_lutheran
Fri., Apr. 28, 2006, 4:20 pm
Carol,

Looks good. Did you use Homestead to create it or was it borrowed? If you used Homestead you might want to check to see if you have a grammatical check code that you can add. Also I might contain it is a box for looks.
flutem3
Fri., Apr. 28, 2006, 7:39 pm
Carol,

Looks good. Did you use Homestead to create it or was it borrowed? If you used Homestead you might want to check to see if you have a grammatical check code that you can add. Also I might contain it is a box for looks.

Hi, Kyle,

I just made it up and did it. I kind of followed the one which somebody else had on here. I wanted to get just the basics and make certain they are okay before I do something else. I tend to put everything under the sun in boxes. That is not a problem. It is more of a problem not to use a box. :D

Thanks for taking a look.

Carol
JackWolfgang
Fri., May. 5, 2006, 10:21 pm
Carol and I discussed tab index in an off-forum e-mail (OK, I admit, I was testing the form!).

David discusses tab index on this page of his GCW site: http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/accessibility_motion.php

However, I don't know how to set it using Homestead.