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Posted by Roy Schestowitz on December 23, 2005, 4:52 am
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__/ [Jukka K. Korpela] on Wednesday 21 December 2005 15:11 \__
> Yeah wrote:
>
>> I have a simple fill-out form with three fields, in this order: Name,
>> E-mail, and Comment.
>
> It would be better to announce your E-mail address, assuming you wish to
> have useful communication. For just sending a free-format message,
> fill-out forms are clumsier to use than even the most primitive E-mail
> program. They can be occasionally useful still as an _additional_
> possibility, since the user cannot always use an E-mail client.
Good thinking, but I would like to point out that contact forms are
frequently used to prevent spam (one could argue that the contrary is true).
Also, the advantage to using E-mail is thatany sender (can) gets the
outgoing messages archived, just in case it bounces or needs to be re-used.
>> But when I receive the E-mail containing the form data,
>> the fields are listed backwards (Comment, E-mail, Name).
>
> It depends on the script. It has nothing to do with HTML.
>
>> I've checked the CGI file, and it doesn't appear to control the sort
>> order.
>
> Then why don't you make it do so, if the order matters to you.
I'd suggest just using a different script. There are plenty. If the order of
fields is a terrible issue at all...
>> Is there a way to tell the HTML code to sort the field data for E-mail?
>
> HTML code does nothing. It is data. Browsers are supposed to create the
> form data set in the order in which fields appear in HTML code, but it
> would be quite unnecessary to rely on browsers getting this right.
> Anyway, what happens after the form data has been sent is quite external
> to HTML.
You could fool the script/users by changing the HTML labels adjacent the
boxes. That would be a terrible idea that'll just mess up the labels in your
E-mail and break field validation, e.g. E-mail address, message length.
Roy
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