Re: Submitting a form using a hypertext link??

On Thu, 4 Jun 1998, Rasmus Kaj wrote:

> I'm not sure this is quite on topic, but here goes ...

To be precise, it is completely off-topic. See
http://www.w3.org/Mail/Lists.html
(A proposal to extend the HTML language with new elements or
attributes related to form submission would be on topic, in principle.
But anyone who asks help for a _practical_ authoring question is
hardly interested in such discussion.)

> It is possible by using javascript, something like this:

Whatever one does using javascript is restricted to working on some
browsers under some conditions.

In HTML, as currently defined, a hypertext link can be used for
the same purposes as form submission in some cases: when no user
input is required (except the action of requesting form submission
or following a link, respectively) and the corresponding form would use
the GET method. Example:

<P>My favorite movie is
<A TITLE='Filmographic info about "Gone with the Wind"'
 HREF="http://us.imdb.com/Title?Gone+with+the+Wind+(1939)">
<CITE>Gone with the Wind</CITE>.</P>

This can be viewed as a convenient shortcut: instead of suggesting
that the user visit http://us.imdb.com/ and do a specific search there,
the author gives a direct link which effectively does the same.

As far as I can see, there is no way to do a similar thing corresponding
to a form with METHOD="POST". So _here_ might be some need for
improvement. I don't think that would be very imporant, though, since
a simple form with only one visible field, an INPUT TYPE="submit"
(using hidden fields to pass the data) would do just fine, apart from
being implemented as a submit button which many people call unesthetic.

Yucca, http://www.hut.fi/u/jkorpela/ or http://yucca.hut.fi/yucca.html

Received on Friday, 5 June 1998 04:16:09 UTC