General comments

There are two buttons which should be placed on your form, most often at the bottom of the form but still "within" the dotted red area. One button is to tell the script that the user has finished entering items and wants to submit the form information. The other is to clear entries and start with a clean form.

The Submit button

In Dreamweaver, one of the Form Objects is Buttons, which brings up the Property inspector window controlling the Submit option and the Reset option. Select the Submit option in the Property inspector window. The name should be left as Submit, but consider changing the label for the button (that is, the text that appears on the button) to something that makes more sense for the form.

This button has the label of Send information. Other options could be Register for class, Sign up for newsletter, Send your question, and so forth.

The Reset button

Although it is not REQUIRED by most scripts to have a Reset button, it is a good idea to provide your users a way to clear all the form fields and start over. Selecting Reset in the Property Inspector changes the button to a reset feature. Again, you might want to use a label that makes more sense, such as Clear form.

Positioning of the buttons

Most of the time these buttons are positioned at the end of the form, so that as the user works down the form, the final choices are there. These buttons can be placed horizontally center, by placing them in a paragraph with a center alignment. Or the buttons can be stacked by separating them with a line break command. Or they can be placed in table cells, if you are using a table structure for your form.

This document is part of a set of tutorials related to putting a form on your website. The initial page is found at cals.arizona.edu/ecat/forms/oldeforms.html