HTML Forms are forms which contain normal content, markup and special elements which are called controls. Checkboxes, radio buttons, menus etc are a few popular types of labeled controls. The users enter information or text in these controls. This step is known as modification of controls.
Once these controls are modified, these forms are submitted to an agent for further processing which may be a web or a mail server. These forms are a tool for receiving information from web surfers. This information can be anything; it can be personal details, transaction details, order form or simply a feedback. HTML Forms store information in the form of alphabetic, numeric or special characters.
HTML Forms take input from the client and the company or the user can store that information in the systems as per their need. He may store the data in a file or he can place an order, he may also gather statistics of the client or can subscribe the client with scheduled or unscheduled newsletters. These forms are basically used for passing client’s data to the server.
There are various forms of elements used in an HTML form. The most common of them is- Input. This is used for selecting user information. The input element varies in accordance to attributes which can be a text field, checkbox, encrypted password, radio button, text area, legend, select, field set, submit button among many others. Text area input is used where there are multi-line texts to be entered. Label is used where a tag or a sticky note needs to be assigned. Select defines a drop-down list and option defines multiple options in the select list. At last, A Submit button is added with the help of submit input type which when pressed will trigger the browser to send data to the server.
Most of the HTML elements control the display and presentation of the data while HTML FORM and INPUT elements are the two elements which add interactivity to the form. HTML forms are used widely nowadays in operations as taking orders, surveys, user registration, feedback etc. These forms resemble a lot to the paper forms as they contain all those features as paper form contains. HTML forms can be defined in programming languages like HTML, Perl, Php, Java or .NET
The developers of HTML Forms face problems in these types of forms which are that these forms are highly dependent on their scripting language. They rely on these scripts for controls, performing calculations and even displaying error messages, as the reports of these HTML Forms are very costly and time consuming to maintain.