html form code generator

M

mirage7513

Hello,

I have developed a html form code generaor at the following address http://websolutions.comli.com/formgenerator.php . The intended final use is for allowing people to make their custom forms and send them to recipients for collection of reports and then download the reports in csv,html formats.

Kindly review the page and any valuable suggesstions will be very much appreciated.

thanking you all.


Mirage
 
J

Jukka K. Korpela

No, he/she/it did not write that. You have munged the address inside a
quotation.
Only a fool would click on that link. Go away.

Informing about services that relate to the topic of the group is not
bad as such, though doing so without telling one's own name, one's
affiliation with the service, and the commercial nature of the service
is suspicious.

More importantly, services like this tend to be crap, and this one is no
exception. The basic idea is not bad, and the service has some support
to new HTML5 input types, but the user interface has very poor
usability, 1997-vintage colors, and poor quality of generated code, such
as <form name="" method="" enctype="multipart/form-data">, which you
would need to edit manually. And it generates a table of label/field
pairs without generating <label> markup. So it mostly does things that
you could just as well (or easier) do manually and does *not* handle the
boring stuff like generating ids, <label> elements, and for=... attributes.
 
M

mirage7513

At the beginning itself i would like to state i am good at problem solving with programming languages like cpp and php and with qt framework. I have been designing solutions for people who want them. I am not and never have been a good web designer. The page you see is made on trial basis to test the suitability for generating custom forms to collect reports from variousdata collection points. I myself am not convinced the page and tool to be ultimate and that is the reason why i posted here for it to be reviewed.

The basic idea for this particular form is to generate code from a html form. You have rightly mentioned the colors are very vintage and that is a flaw i am working on. Regarding usability, the basic purpose is that people having limited knowledge of programming need to create their own custom formand be able to send that to data collection centres to fillout and submit it to main website for further analysis and action. i have intentionally left the name and method values blank for the form because they would be programatically decided inside the feature for which i am planning to use it. This particular form was made for review about its usability and acceptanceto general public and to get an idea of how easy it would be to create a form from the tool. The tool require nothing other than a mandaotory name and all other fields are optional. Though my enduser my not even see all those fields related design , making provisions for them is not bad. Additionally anyone interested in generating quick table format form may well use it with ease.

I am further planning to implement ajax to various elements. And also an option to either use table, list, or simple label field values.

Thank you for interest shown.


My name is George, and I am from India. I have small firm that caters clients small office programming needs.
I have recently joinined this forum for knowledge and information regardingHTML best practices and latest coding styles. I like the pseudonym mirage for online conversations.

P.S. If you could guide me to some color suggestions, it would be very helpful.
 
G

Gordon Levi

mirage7513 said:
At the beginning itself i would like to state i am good at problem solving with programming languages like cpp and php and with qt framework. I have been designing solutions for people who want them. I am not and never have been a good web designer. The page you see is made on trial basis to test the suitability for generating custom forms to collect reports from various data collection points. I myself am not convinced the page and tool to be ultimate and that is the reason why i posted here for it to be reviewed.

The basic idea for this particular form is to generate code from a html form. You have rightly mentioned the colors are very vintage and that is a flaw i am working on. Regarding usability, the basic purpose is that people having limited knowledge of programming need to create their own custom form and be able to send that to data collection centres to fillout and submit it to main website for further analysis and action. i have intentionally left the name and method values blank for the form because they would be programatically decided inside the feature for which i am planning to use it. This particular form was made for review about its usability and acceptance to general public and to get an idea of how easy it would be to create a form from the tool. The tool require nothing other than a mandaotory name and all other fields are optional. Though my enduser my not even see all those fields related design , making provisions for them is not bad. Additionally anyone interested
in generating quick table format form may well use it with ease.

I am further planning to implement ajax to various elements. And also an option to either use table, list, or simple label field values.

Thank you for interest shown.


My name is George, and I am from India. I have small firm that caters clients small office programming needs.
I have recently joinined this forum for knowledge and information regarding HTML best practices and latest coding styles. I like the pseudonym mirage for online conversations.

P.S. If you could guide me to some color suggestions, it would be very helpful.

I found this book very helpful on all aspects of the aesthetics of web
design including colour
<http://www.amazon.com/The-Principles-Beautiful-Web-Design/dp/098057689X>.
 
J

Jukka K. Korpela

The basic idea for this particular form is to generate code from a
html form.

I think you mean "for" rather than "from". At the page you mentioned,
http://websolutions.comli.com/formgenerator.php
a visitor can use a graphic user interface to create an HTML form and
see both the form (in some rendering) and the HTML code for it. As I
wrote, the idea as such is OK.

The first problem with using the page is that when the page is entered,
a large ad appears, apparently an ad of a "free" or "cheap" hosting
provider. This alone is sufficient to many people to go elsewhere.
You have rightly mentioned the colors are very vintage
and that is a flaw i am working on.

If you don't know which colors to use, use black on white - more
exactly, let them be defaulted. People who use a page to create an HTML
form should not expect an impressive visual experience but simply
something that works. However, for the element that shows generated
code, some distinctive background is probably good for usability. Make
it something light so that the contrast between text and color is
sufficient. And make the font size reasonable. A size of 10px is simply
too small even for code that will mostly just by copied and pasted - it
should still be *possible* to read it without zooming. The basic rule
for setting font size is "Don't".
Regarding usability, the basic
purpose is that people having limited knowledge of programming need
to create their own custom form and be able to send that to data
collection centres to fillout and submit it to main website for
further analysis and action.

The design of a form is just one part of that. You also need the
server-side form handler, and normally the form has to be designed
according to the requirements of the handler or together with it.
i have intentionally left the name and
method values blank for the form because they would be
programatically decided inside the feature for which i am planning to
use it.

Programmatically? How? The method=... and action=... attributes should
be selected by the designer of the form, to match the form handler. The
method=... attribute is optional, so there is little point in having
method="" in the generated code. And the name=... attribute in <form> is
outdated and never needed, though sometimes still used out of a habit.

The page is slow. And I mean slow. It sends an HTTP request when the
user adds a field to the form. Normally, generators like this work with
client-side JavaScript. Interaction with server might be used to save
the work on a server or to retrieve a saved work.

For usability, the buttons

(Tyhjennä) (Add Field) (New Form) (Cancel)

are just too much. There is too big a risk for clicking on a wrong
button, destroying the entered data. (Add field) should be enough.
Starting a new form should be placed elsewhere, and the other are not
needed.

As I mentioned, labels and controls should be associated using <label>
markup. This is a basic accessibility requirement
 
D

Denis McMahon

... but the user interface has very poor
usability, 1997-vintage colors, and poor quality of generated code, such
as <form name="" method="" enctype="multipart/form-data">, which you
would need to edit manually. And it generates a table of label/field
pairs without generating <label> markup.
and does *not* handle the
boring stuff like generating ids, <label> elements, and for=...
attributes.

+1 to all of that.

This is actually of some interest, because it mirrors a project I'm
looking at undertaking, except I'm going to have to use an IIS / aspx
environment, ah well, it will be another learning curve I guess.
 
P

pentapus

No, he/she/it did not write that. You have munged the address inside a
quotation.


Informing about services that relate to the topic of the group is not
bad as such, though doing so without telling one's own name, one's
affiliation with the service, and the commercial nature of the service
is suspicious.

More importantly, services like this tend to be crap, and this one is no
exception. The basic idea is not bad, and the service has some support
to new HTML5 input types, but the user interface has very poor
usability, 1997-vintage colors, and poor quality of generated code, such
as <form name="" method="" enctype="multipart/form-data">, which you
would need to edit manually. And it generates a table of label/field
pairs without generating <label> markup. So it mostly does things that
you could just as well (or easier) do manually and does *not* handle the
boring stuff like generating ids, <label> elements, and for=... attributes.

Editing data by forms is such routine stuff I would think that there are
many "frameworks" for that.

Years ago, when I switched to PHP I wrote a database module that
generates editable forms. You feed in the field names, labels, and field
types and it generates a form and an editable, sortable and searchable
table. PHP at that time had nothing even like perl's CGI.pm. I tinker
with it from time to time and add things I need, like date and time
selects and image and file handling.

Data is so fundamental to the web you have to have something or you wind
up doing the same grunt work over and over and over.
 
J

Jukka K. Korpela

Editing data by forms is such routine stuff I would think that there are
many "frameworks" for that.

There are, but finding a good one is difficult. At worst, they automate
just the trivial part which is almost as easily, or easier, created by
typing simple HTML markup and a nice juicy piece of CSS. Even <label>
markup is missing quite often. Do they create modern forms that use
HTML5 input types with suitable fallback to JavaScript checks? Hardly.
Data is so fundamental to the web you have to have something or you wind
up doing the same grunt work over and over and over.

With forms, the situation still is that if you want to have correct,
robust code that produces a good-looking, useable, accessible form, you
have to do it yourself, more or less, or hire someone to do that for you.
 
P

pentapus

<snip>

Do they create modern forms that use
HTML5 input types with suitable fallback to JavaScript checks? Hardly.

This is something that has come to my attention only recently. Looking
again just now I see that there is more there than I expected! I'll add.

Often something like this will sneak past me. So much in HTML and CSS is
useless until it gets enough support that I little notice when something
is now doable. If I don't see it here, I may not even know.
With forms, the situation still is that if you want to have correct,
robust code that produces a good-looking, useable, accessible form, you
have to do it yourself, more or less, or hire someone to do that for you.

Front end work is like that, it often has to fit in a spot.

With back end work, the ability to easily add fields, rearrange and
change types quickly is a big plus. Nobody ever really knows what they
want/need until after they are using it!
 

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