Giving The Customer Input With Dreamweaver

Gone are the days when websites were just information boards for clients and customers to passively stare at. Networking and feedback features are a must to ensure your visitor feels like they are also a contributor. This article tells you how to do this without the headache!

Gone are the days when websites were just information boards for clients and customers to passively stare at. Interactivity is now the name of the game and if your site doesn't make your visitors feel special and appreciated then you can bet that they won't come back. Networking and feedback features are a must to ensure your visitor feels like they are also a contributor but for too long creating this opportunity has been a real headache for the budding web designer.

Dreamweaver CS4 has made the task of adding input forms a lot easier so that there is really no excuse for stinting on feedback forms, joining forms or submissions online. Dreamweaver's combination of form-design and validation tools have been specifically designed to make the onerous task of creating an input form as smooth as possible, cutting out a number of the time consuming phases designers had to trawl through in the past.

For example the act of creating form fields and the act of validating those fields so that the correct data is displayed and accepted has been simplified into one process in Dreamweaver CS4. The rather marvellously named Spry Validation Widgets generate script that tests the data inputted and ensures that the inputted information is both legible and accurate.

There are three basic types of form field and anyone who has ever entered data on a website will be familiar with them all. Firstly, there are text fields in which only single line text can be inputted, for example a telephone number or an email address. Text area fields are very similar to plain old text fields but they offer the customer the opportunity to enter additional information such as any special instructions for a delivery or the answer to a specific question in a job submission. Checkboxes do exactly what they say on the tin; check or uncheck the box to receive a newsletter or other information.

In addition to these field types each field will have a name and a label. The name will be a simple description of the desired data, e.g. telephone number, whilst the label will be a more polite version for the customer, e.g. enter your telephone number here. The field name is what will appear in the email you receive detailing the inputted data, e.g. telephone number 07894 666666.

Of course in order for any of the inputted information to be successfully transmitted the form data needs to be sent to a web server that can interpret it. This is a big bug-bear of many web designers although the majority of hosts do now provide such pre-made scripts so the difficulty has been substantially alleviated.

Even with these improvements creating input forms for your website is no mean feat and takes a lot of practice and effort to successfully achieve. Yet the benefits of collecting and transmitting data in today's ever more interactive online environment are incalculable and this is why it is advisable to enrol on a training course in Dreamweaver CS4.