Information about the Form Web Part in FrontPage 2003

In Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003, you can use Form Web Parts to extend the functionality of Web Part connections by enabling site visitors to enter data through familiar form interfaces that pass data into a Web Part connection. The Form Web Part is similar to the Content Editor Web Part in that you can specify the HTML source that the Web Part renders. However, the Form Web Part can also detect the form elements that are in its HTML source and determine the elements that are possible data sources in a Web Part connection.

The Form Web Part implements the Row Provider connection interface. As such, it can pass a row of data to another Web Part. During connection authoring time, the Web Part parses through its HTML source to find all the form elements that can provide HTML and enumerates them as cells in the row of data that you are about to provide. The names of the cells correspond to the names of the form elements in the HTML code.

By default, the Form Web Part has a text box and a Submit button. However, any number and variety of the following form elements can be used in the Form Web Part to provide data:

Text boxes
When used as a data source, a text box provides the text that the user entered. The following is an example of a text box form element:Check box
When used as a data source, the check box provides the "value" attribute of the control when it is selected, and the value "off" when it is not selected. The following is an example of a check box form element:Select control
When used as a data source, the drop-down control provides the "value" attribute of the item that is selected. If there are multiple selections, it provides the value of a comma-delimited string of all the selected values. If there is no selection made, it provides the value "off". The following is an example of a select control form element:
Option button
When used as a data source, the option button provides the "value" attribute of the selected option button. The following is an example of an option button form element:


Text area
When used as a data source, the text area provides the text that the user entered. The following is an example of a text area form element:
In FrontPage 2003, you can insert form elements or edit the HTML content of the Form Web Part in a WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") environment, much like how you edit any other part of your HTML pages. You can also connect the Form Web Part with other Web Parts in FrontPage. Because the Form Web Part implements the Row Provider interface, you can also connect to a Web Part on another page.

For more information about Form Web Parts, see FrontPage Help. To do so, on the Help menu, click Microsoft Office FrontPage Help, type Form Web Parts in the Search for box, and then press ENTER to view the topics that are returned.