Learning Aim C

 In this section we will look at how text, tables, forms and frames can be used in web pages.

 All websites contain a certain amount of text.  The recommended way to format the text on a website is to use CSS (described later in the unit), rather than use individual text formatting options as you would in a word processing program.  However, individual text formatting can be applied using to tool bar at the bottom of the Dreamweaver® editing window.

 Tables are useful not only for displaying tabular information but can also be used to lay out your web page.

 You can create simple forms easily with Adobe® Dreamweaver®, but to process the form entries once the user has completed them, you need to create programs which run on the web server that hosts the site.  This is beyond the scope of this unit.  However, it is useful to know how to create forms.  Also you can use JavaScript in web pages to make sure the entries in a form are correct before it is sent to the server.  For example, if a form field requires the user to enter a date, JavaScript can be used to check if the date is valid and display an error message to the user if it is not.

 There are a number of different types of input methods you can use on a form, the simplest being a text field.

 Text areas provide a larger, multi-line area into which text can be entered.

 A radio button is a type of user interface feature which allows users to select only one option, not multiple ones.  For example, a pair of buttons labelled Male and Female would allow a user to indicate their gender, and so only one button can be selected.

 You can also add check boxes to your form.  Unlike radio buttons, any number of these can be checked.

 A drop-down box from which a user can select a single item.

 Your form needs to end with a 'Submit' button. If you have a client-side script that validates the form, clicking the Submit button will link to the validation script.  Clicking the button will also submit the form to the web server where the data the user has entered can be processed.  Insert a button using the same method as the other input methods.  You usually leave the label blank for a button.

 In the past, frames were widely used to split web pages into sections, but they have now been replaced by better ways of formatting a page, such as cascading style sheets (CSS).  Frames are essentially two or more web pages displayed together to give a layout effect, such as a header or a side bar.