This tutorial will teach you how to create a simple mailto: form for your web site. If you don't have a CGI script available to you for creating a form, then you'll need to use a mailto: form. With a mailto: form, the website visitor completes the form, uses a submit button, and the form information is compiled and mailed to your email address.It's a good idea to also always include your email address to the form as well, just in case the visitor to your web site is using a browser that doesn't support forms, or if the visitor doesn't have their email tool set up correctly with their browser.
A mailto: form is an HTML page with some specific form tags, which we'll cover in the next tutorials. Anything that you normally can add to an HTML page, including graphics, icons, page dividers, backgrounds, text colors and background colors, can also be used with a form page. You can use forms to create surveys, a guestbook, quizzes, and a lot more.
You'll want to make your form page as easy to use as possible, and possibly offer some incentive for people to fill out your form. Many people don't like to use forms, so keep the form simple and to the point.
Forms are an advanced HTML topic. We suggest that you tackle beginning HTML topics before moving onto creating your own forms.
A final point: you'll need to have a mailto: formatter software utility to decode your mailto responses. To find a mailto: form decoder, visit Shareware.com and search for "mailto". Some of the applications that will decode your responses are called Web Parse, Form Reader, Mailto Formatter, Form Reader, Drop Formatter (for the Mac).
If you did have a CGI form script available on your web server, this tutorial will still be helpful. Generally, the only difference between a mailto: form and a CGI form will be in the first FORM tag.
Pencils sharpened? Then let's move onto the next step, HTML for Forms.
