Re: forms question

S. HAYLES (sh23@leicester.ac.uk)
Fri, 19 Aug 1994 17:39:47 +0200

Kumaraswamy Subramanian wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Aug 1994, S. HAYLES wrote:
>

[ stuff deleted ]

> >
> > You could use hidden fields in the form to store status
> > eg
> > <input type="hidden" name="status" value="put status info here ">
> >
> > I've made this work quite well in a search screen. If you need lots
> > of status you can of course add more hidden fields - status1, status2
> > etc.
> >
>
> This is really a slick feature which I wasn't aware of so far. Is this
> an undocumented feature ? This is not mentioned in the FORMs overview document
> (http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/fill-out-forms/overview.html)
> Is there any other document out there with these kind of features?
>

It is documented, but not in the introductory documents - I had some
problems tracking down the details myself. It is documented at:
http://www.hal.com/users/connolly/html-spec/Elements/INPUT.html

(There is a thorough listing of forms features starting at:
http://www.hal.com/users/connolly/html-spec/Forms.html)

I don't know of any other documents using hidden fields - but I
haven't been looking for them!

> Is the INPUT tag with TYPE= "hidden" respected by the Mosaic clients other
> than Xmosaic?

Good question - it should be, but I heard that some WWW clients were
displaying hidden fields! No doubt the more it gets used, the more
clients will treat it properly.

For an example of hidden fields in use view
http://indigo.stile.le.ac.uk/~sgj/STILE/index.html
click on the Search link, then view the source of the resulting
document. (It's an experimental search engine that allows exploration
of our part of the web by finding commonly linked documents.)

Steven
----------------------------------------------------------
Steven Hayles - Computer System Developer, STILE Project
University of Leicester, University Rd, Leicester, LE1 7RH
Tel (0116) 2522557 Fax (0116) 2523604 Email sh23@le.ac.uk
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