Re: additional HTML+ FORM types

Joel Richardson (jer@bagheera.jax.org)
Sun, 10 Oct 93 21:37:46 EDT


> We have checkboxes, radio buttons, and rudimentary fields. What other types
> would people like to see for FORMs? How about sliders (vertical,
> horizontal, knobs)? Selection lists? Should the user be able to queue
> clicks in an ISMAP area to go along with some other checkbox and field
> selections before being sent off as a single query?

Yes, all of these! (What else?) We are planning to provide as much of
a database front end through WWW as we can. Right now, we are concentrating
on querying. But adding things like selection lists to forms would make it
feasible to do the editorial interfaces as well. Would it make sense to
keep the list in a separate document and have a form's input field specify
the URL? The usual document caching mechanisms would then save a lot of
unnecessary traffic in many situations.

Another wish I have for forms is to associate different action URLs with
different submit buttons rather than one for the whole form. One could make
this upward compatible with the existing HTMP+ spec by stating that any
INPUT (of type "submit") that does not specify an action URL uses the form's
action URL by default.

--Joel

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Joel Richardson Email: jer@jax.org
The Jackson Laboratory Phone: (207) 288-3371 x1425
600 Main Street Fax: (207) 288-8982
Bar Harbor, Maine 04609
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