Aha. Fooled you, didn't I? "Thrilling" is all relative, anyway. ;)

If you've done as we suggested and downloaded or purchased a WYSIWYG HTML editor such as VisualPage, then all you have to do to make a more complicated form is press buttons. This is the "Forms" toolbar in Visual Page:

In order to make a checkbox, you simply press the checkbox button, and voila!

You will probably want some meaningful text next to the box, like this:

Yes

No

Maybe

Checkboxes allow your visitors to make more than one selection. If you want to restrict the input to only one selection out of a possible list, then you use what are known as "radio buttons:"

Male

Female

Your editor program will give the fields default names, but you will almost certainly want to go in and change them to make them more descriptive. For instance, that last radio button field, "Female," was generated by this code:

<INPUT TYPE="RADIO" NAME="Radio7" VALUE="Radio">Female

It would make more sense to go in and change the name so that the code reads like this:

<INPUT TYPE="RADIO" NAME="Female" VALUE="Radio">Female

That way when the information is emailed to you you won't have to struggle to remember what "Radio7" means.

The field we used in the mailing list form was called a "Text Box." You can also create a larger box called a "Text Area," which will allow your visitors to write whole paragraphs should they choose to do so. You can make them as large as you want, and optionally you can include sample text, to give your visitors an idea of what they might type into the box:

Please type any comments in this box containing sample text you can delete ... and be nice! Grr Worra worra

There are other things you can do with forms, such as drop down lists, but they're probably best left for another day. Oh, one thing that does come in handy: The Reset button. The Reset button's function is to erase all the information that has been already entered, in case the person filling out the form has second thoughts. The code for a Reset button is:

<INPUT TYPE="RESET" NAME="Reset" VALUE="Reset">, producing:

If you happen to be the kind of web author who creates home pages with unreadable text, with a billion slow loading graphics, which would indicate you enjoy torturing your visitors, then secretly substituting reset button code for the submit button, offers endless opportunities to practice adolescent sadism upon your fellow Newbies.

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