Name
<FORM> — NN all IE all HTML all
Synopsis
<FORM>...</FORM>
End Tag: Required
Despite the importance of HTML forms
in communication between web page visitors and the server, a
FORM
element at its heart is nothing more than a
container of controls. Most, but not all, form controls are created
in the document as INPUT
elements. Even if user
interaction with INPUT
elements is not intended
for submission to a server (perhaps some client-side scripting
requires interaction with the user), such INPUT
elements are contained by a FORM
element.
A document may contain any number of FORM
elements, but a client may submit the settings of controls from only
one form at a time. Therefore, the only time it makes sense to divide
a series of form controls into multiple FORM
elements is when the control groups can be submitted independently of
each other. If you need to logically or structurally group controls
while maintaining a single form, use the FIELDSET
element to create the necessary subgroupings of controls.
When a form is submitted to the server, all controls that have
NAME
attributes assigned to them pass both their names and values—in name/value pairs—to the server for further processing (or possibly as an email attachment or message with Navigator). A Common Gateway Interface (CGI) program running on the server can accept and dissect the name/value pairs for further processing (adding a record to a server database or initiating a keyword search, for example). The server program is ...
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