Form Elements In HTML 3.0

This section is based on discussions with Dave Ragget and William Perry .

This document outlines some modifications/additions to the definition of form elements in HTML. Many of these suggestions are motivated by a desire to be able to produce multimodal rendererings of WWW documents; such multimodal renderings will enable people on the go to gain spoken access to the WWW over the telephone, or while driving.

Directing User Attention

This section describes the need to cue the user to a suggested sequence in which form fields should be traversed and filled out.

Labels For Input Elements

The label element allows the HTML markup to capture the association between input elements and their associated textual label. This allows the semantics of the dialogue represented by a form to explicitly captured in the markup.

Example Of Form Using Labels

This section demonstrates a simple form that has been enhanced with semantic information using the group and label tags.

Grouping Logically Related UI Elements

Element group allows the form designer to group logically related UI elements, e.g., a group of radio buttons together.

Element Form And Nested Dialogues

As W3 forms become more complex, there is a need for nested dialogues to simplify the interface and save screen realestate. In the case of speech-centric browsers, such increased structure provides the means to produce succinct renderings of dialogues. We propose nested form elements to enable nested dialogues.
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T. V. Raman
Email: raman@adobe.com
Last modified: Wed Feb 19 11:56:57 1997