Re: grayed out/conditional form selections

P. Raghavan Menon wrote,

>I was wondering if there are any ideas/plans to implement
>grayed out/conditional forms.
>What I was thinking of is something like this:
>
><FORM METHOD=post ACTION="http://www.hal.com/sample">
><P><input name="gender" type=radio value="male"> Male <P>
>
><CONDITIONAL "gender"="male">
>   We have a fine selection of ties for the well dressed man.
>   What kind would you be interested in ?<p>
>   <input name="tietype" type=checkbox value="flashy"> Look at me!<p>
>   <input name="tietype" type=checkbox value="subdued"> Subdued.<p>
></CONDITIONAL>

I think this would be very useful. We have developed a few systems which
need conditional branching and presently there are only two options:

(1) Display all items, and instruct the user, e.g. "If you answered foo to
question 3, skip questions 4-7"

(2) Have multiple pages for a survey and keep track of users by
authentication or Netscape cookies. The branching is then handled
server-side. This option is preferable to (1) but requires additional
transactions and server-side overhead, which is undesirable.

I would be curious as to other ideas people may have. Client-side scripting
could be used to set items disabled as things happened.

--Barry


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Barry Johnson                                         (612) 593-5000
Dynamic Information Systems, LLC                 FAX: (612) 593-5081
5401 Gamble Drive, Suite 106
Minneapolis, MN  55416                        barry@dynamic-info.com
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Received on Monday, 22 January 1996 13:27:34 UTC