What is Web Form?

Have you noticed that in the last two years the word "Networking" have become very popular? Every official event integrate in its agenda a time for Networking. And why is that? Because the Internet has turn to be the modern metaphor of human interaction (some will say the post-modern) .

While a content that is given for someone else to read is in itself some level of human interaction, the real Dialog on the web start where website visitors has the ability to feed some Content that is later exposed to other visitors (A Community ) or that is send to the website owner for some processing that open the gate for future interaction.

This article is one of a series of articles in which I explain to non professionals some of the basic facts and secrets of the Web and show them that they can too interpret the underneath of this Matrix and use it productively. In this specific article I explain the very basics of Web forms so you can make your first steps of Handshaking with your's website visitors.

Web forms are indeed the handshake of virtual world. The quasi physical touch that mean - We are not just looking one at each other but we are also able to exchange information and activity with each other. Web forms are those fields in a website that let you the visitor enter some data and submit is to somewhere where it is processed by owner's program and as result start an exchange of some activity and information between you and the website owner. Take a look here to see an example of web form and how it is look like in the underneath HTML script.

Let me show you some of the very basic facts about Web forms and uncover the mystery that wrap this strange creature we frequently see in a website.

First: Web forms are interactive field rendered by the Web Browser (the tool you use to browse websites) . Those fields are represented by the underneath HTML script. See my article Why should I Learn HTML?. Those fields are considered since unlike textual content of a Website they let the visitor feed some content that can be used for some interaction and future activity that involve both the visitor and some service provider that stand behind the intention to present the form fields.

Second: When visitor enter some data, for example entering some text in a text field of Web form, the information is kept by the Web browser memory so it can be collected for the next step.

Third: The information gathered by web form is intend to be sent to somewhere else. If it will not send elsewhere and will stay on the visitors side there will not be any interaction. This information is therefor sent to some other software running somewhere else on some other computer connected to the Internet.

Forth: We call those software that get web form data Server Side software since it run on some hosted server and does not represent human end point of the Internet (like you) but machinery end point. See my article Web hosting plan guide to understand this server-side issue better.

Fifth: The Information you feed into web form is is used to generate a Web Request to the server side software. This request start when you click the "Submit" button (or something parallel) but web designer can also make it happen underneath by detecting some event generated by user's actions. This can be useful in some situations and it is possible you will not be aware of that happening for example, when you write some search phrase an underneath web request can go and bring back options for completing your phrase. Still in most of the cases that website owner interested in collection data gathered by few fields, the event of sending the web request to the server occur upon known gesture of visitor - for example pressing a button call "Submit".

Sixth: The request sent to server is an interaction between two softwares - your Web Browser from one side and the Server Side software on the other side. This interaction carry with it textual content generated by collecting all the details entered by user into form fields.

Finally: Server Side software parse request data and translate it into meaningful discrete pieces of information. Those pieces of information are then sent to some other module of the Server Side software for actual processing and possibly storing on what is call Database. A complete chain of activities is now taking place for doing something meaningful with the data you supplied. For example, creating an account or sending you an Email. We call that activity Server Side Logic or Business Logic. These are both very broad terms frequently use by professionals.

Now when you know the very basic technical facts you will probably want to get some ideas of what can you do with Web form on your Website. Here is a partial list:

• Contact Forms: those forms let visitor enter some information that allow website owner to contact him or her later. Account registration form relates to that category, but form can be much modest and simple for example asking the visitor to enter Email address.
• Feedback Forms: Some fields that let visitor give website owner a feedback about the content presented in a website.
• Survey Forms: Great tool for getting information about visitor's opinions with regarding to some issue.
• Article or Blog constructing forms: These form let user feed data that is later used to construct and article or Blog post.
• Operational forms: These forms are usually presented as part of a service user is subscribed to. For example, Website for managing bank account can show you with a form for transferring money from your savings into your current account.

Lets go back to the beginning, Web forms are the handshaking of the virtual world and creating web forms is the step of taking your visitors from being a passive watcher into active participator. Web forms let you exchange informations with your website visitors but also anchor an exchanging interests with this visitor. This also means a point of trust so if visitor give you a personal information then he or she trust you to respect its privacy. Don't forget that when handling with Web forms!