Posted by JD on 05/27/07 08:20

gordon.is.a.moron@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I was pondering creating form filling software. As a sample I decided
> to take a look at
> the sign up page for hotmail (http://get.live.com/mail/overview then
> Signup)
> Probably not the best example as it looks quite complicated.
> My main question is, when you have filled in the fields etc. and
> click I Accept, where
> is the form actually submitted?
>
> I'm guessing it is submitted via javascript, either
> https://signup.live.com/scripts/liveframework.js?nx=11.0.3828.0
> or https://signup.live.com/scripts/omnitureH2.js?nx=11.0.3828.0 at the
> bottom. Presumably the parameters collected in the fielda are
> submitted somehow? I don't really understand how the field inputs are
> passed as it doesn't seem particularly obvious. Also, I see no
> reference to <web: ..> tags, are these ASP specific or some such?
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Gordy.
>

Hi

As cwdjrxyz explained, the Hotmail signup page is full of Microsoft crap
and not a good starting point for understanding forms. Besides, that
page has a XHTML 1.0 Strict doctype but the code is nothing like XHTML
Strict, so it's simply chocful of validation errors.

To get to grips with forms, you really need to have some knowledge of
server-side scripting. PHP, a server-side scripting language, is both
popular and easy to learn. After a bit of practice, you'll be amazed how
easy it is to set up forms and then process the data with PHP.

To learn PHP, you can install Apache and PHP on your computer and then
tweak the config files to get them to work together. It's not hard, and
both are available for Windows.

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