Form Controls

The key to pick the right form control is first to think about what you want to do, But not how do you want to do it. Consider for an example, The 'choose one thing from this list ' is good example of "what to do", and the 'radio buttons' is good example of "how to do it". In short, you need to think about an intent of each of the form control..

This kind of thinking is important, since the XForms is designed to use beyond the conventional desktop environments. Consider for an example, the same form could be deployed across the small-screen devices, perhaps the phone or the PDA, or a eyes-free devices, perhaps over a phone.

The Form controls listed

The following list of the form controls helps you to focus on the intent behind each of the form control. After that, you will learn how to fine-tune the presentation of the form controls. A list of all form controls, with an intent of each

Form Control	Intent	Examples
input	Entry of an free-form value	The edit box, The voice prompt
textarea	Entry of the large amounts of free-form of text	An email body, weblog entry
secret	Entry of the sensitive information	The password prompt
select1	Choice of an one-and-only-one item from the list	The radio buttons, drop-list
select	Choice of one or more items from the list	The checkbox group, listbox
range	Selecting a value from the range	The slider, volume control
upload	Selecting the data source	The file picker, a digital camera interface
trigger	Activating the defined process	The button, hyperlink
submit	Activating submission of a form	The submit button
output	Display-only of the form data	the inline text

Every form control has a required label child (except output, where it's optional). This enforces the good design habit of always associating a label with a form control. Other common child elements are help for a message at the user's request, hint for a message at the user agent's request, and alert which is available for error messages.

Adjusting the appearances

Each of the form control also accepts the attribute named appearance, allowing the finer control of an appearance but without going so far as to completely break down the separation between the content and a style. The attribute do accepts three predefined values,the full, compact, and the minimal.

These attributes do give the guidance, in general terms, of how the form control must be rendered. Consider for an example, the full rendering of the select1 would attempt to show an every possible choice, for example the large radio button group. On the other extreme, minimal might present only the tiny one-line list that will have to be expanded to see the choices. A third alternative, compact, would provide the happy middle ground. Keep in mind that these are only the suggestions to an XForms engine--for example on the tiny screen, all the select1 controls might work as the pop-ups.

Carefully examine the following form control examples, then compare with the live rendering below.
<select1 ref="my:name/@title">
<label>Title:
</label>
</select1>
<input ref="my:name">
<label>Name:
</label>
</input>
<secret ref="my:password">
<label>Password:
</label>
</secret>
<textarea ref="my:address">
<label>Address
</label>
</textarea>
<trigger>
<label>Push Me
</label>
</trigger>

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Keywords: XForms controls, asp net controls, vb net controls, visual studio controls visual basic controls, visual basic net controls, windows forms controls

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