HTML Elements and Attributes that Control the Form on the Webpage

Guest Author - Diane Cipollo

Below is a list of the most commonly used^*** html element tags that control a form on the webpage.

Note: Some attributes listed below have been depreciated in favor of Cascading Style Sheets.

Creates and Controls Webpage Form
Element	Opening Tag	Attributes	Closing Tag	Description
form	<form>	action="location" method="type"	</form>	Creates the shell of a web form action - URL for processing program method - how data is sent to program (get or post)
input	<input>	type="?" name="id" value="default" checked size="#" maxlength="#" onClick="script"	None	Creates an input field in a web form type - type of input field can be set to-- text - one line of text button - creates a button password - bullets displayed to hide password checkbox - square check box hidden - not visible on webpage file - file select control radio - circular radio button submit - submit button reset - reset button image - use an image as a button name - identifies input field value - default value in field checked - default radio or checkbox selected size - length of field in number of characters maxlength - maximum number of characters onClick - URL of script to run on submit
option	<option>	value="?" selected	</option>	Creates one item in a drop-down menu list (see select tag) value - sets value for option selected - item selected by default
select	<select>	name="id" size="#" multiple	</select>	Creates a drop-down menu list on web form name - identifies input field size - number of visible items in menu multiple - allows multiple selections
textarea	<textarea>	name="id" rows="#" cols="#"	</textarea>	Creates a multi-line input field in a form name - identifies input field rows - number of rows = height of input box cols - number of cols = width of input box

^***A complete list of html element tags can be found at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) website.
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/index/elements.html
^**Color can be set using color names (red, black, etc) or RGB color codes or hexidecimal color codes.