Assignment 9: Chapters 6 & 7

I want everyone to double up on these last two chapters about HTML. Read chapters 6 & 7 and follow along to continue work on the bubble under website.

The rest of the book covers other areas of web development, some of which we will cover over the rest of the semester. When it comes to tables and forms, remember the fundamental analogy for HTML – put the square pegs in the square holes; round pegs in round holes. So only use tables for charts, calendars, and tabular data. Only use forms for forms. There are a lot of tags involved with building an HTML table or form, so just take your time.

HTML Forms

You can follow along in the book to build your form for the Bubble Under site, or try a different approach. I personally recommend putting form fields above their input fields, but do what you feel is best for your skill level. When you get to the section of chapter 7 that is called “Form Processing,” understand that you can build a form with HTML, but sending a form requires a knowledge of web programming, such as PHP. But there are third party services that can handle the programming for you which is what is discussed in this section. You can follow the book or find a service that you like. A google search for “free HTML forms” brought up a number of results including these as an alternative to the book:

• http://www.zoho.com/creator/html-form-builder.html
• http://www.123contactform.com/signup.html
• http://wufoo.com/signup/

This is a good option for your level of experience, and later on in your career when you learn PHP or another programming language, you can build AND program forms on your own.