Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with form

Linus said git was a file system!

jeffburdges — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 07:33:14 -0800

Anybody have opinions on abstraction vs. commuting patchs (git, mercurial, darcs) for handling short form letters in latex? I usually write form letters by first building a framework with various variables holding various bits that might change, and then tweaking the bits for individual letters. I found this "abstraction" approach was fairly efficient for very repetitive form letter, but I've encountered some situations requiring more flexible forum letters recently.

Does anyone have any comments about using distributed version control systems like git, mercurial, or darcs for forum letters? I'd imagine the main issue will be the enormous number of branches, so being able push a patch through to all branches simultaneously might become annoying.

I'd usually use git for version control, but maybe darcs is worth it here?

p.s. Anybody have other approaches for resolving this question?

MSAccessFilter: How do I create a printable report in MS access, with a click-through interface to choose my data?

Seeba — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 06:26:47 -0800

MSAccessFilter: How do I create a printable report in MS access, with a click-through interface to choose my data? Good morning,
At the office, we're using an access database that everyone is afraid to touch, but at the same time, it's not quite doing what we want it to do:

I want to take information from two or three tables (the information's all linked together), then print a summary of the day's activity (one of the fields in one of my tables is a value for the date).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Can I set up a form so that all my coworkers have to do is click "create report", then it'll give them another form with a calendar to click on, maybe a drop down box of another variable or two, click "create", and a report come out that I can print/save/distribute?

(Apologies if this is basic-- my google-fu has failed me, and I think it's because I'm not phrasing any of this correctly-- this strikes me as something that should be relatively easy to set up, though probably time consuming)

How do I pass form data between pages and have it email me the results?

Elminster24 — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:06:52 -0800

Help me learn to code a form that passes multiple fields across several pages and ultimately emails me the results. For purposes of this question, lets say I have a website with three pages.

* Page 1 has a form with a drop-down to select what industry someone is in.

* Page 2 should list the selection that was made on page one, and possibly change some of the other form fields on the page as a result of what was selected on page one

* Page 3 summarizes all of the selections that were made and requests the submitters email address. Upon submission, all of the data is emailed in a cleanly formatted text email to sales@mydomain.com with the from address also being sales@mydomain.com. Mydomain.com is the site where this form will be located. Additionally, I would like to pass through the referrer string from Page 1 so I can see where the lead came from (for example, if they came from google this would give me the keyword and other data).

Right now I have a simple one-page form on my site and I use the free service from a site called emailmeform.com to email the form to me but there MUST be a way to just have it handled all from my site and not need a third party.

I know a decent amount of HTML/CSS to the point where I can code a nicely designed site and I'm just getting started with PHP. I'd say I know enough to do includes and have some sense of what is going on in the code with limited ability to hack it but I don't yet have an understanding of how to implement global GET and POST commands (which I have a hunch is what is involved in passing the data between pages according to the initial research I've done).

I'm eager to learn the required coding skills to be able to do this myself but I'm not quite sure where to start as there are several components to this I've identified. I would appreciate suggestions, links, guides, tutorials, and anything else that can help me figure out:

1. How to properly build the form so I can pass form field inputs between several pages during a session

2. How to properly capture the referrer string when the user submits the form on the first page to move on to the next step (I assume this would then be stored as a hidden field input)

3. How to simply set things up so I can manage the emailing of all this form data on my own. I've seen various PHP scripts out there that claim to do this but they are a bit intimidating as I'm not quite sure what is involved in making this work. Ie. could I set it to send from any email address I want or does it have to be from the same domain as the site is hosted on and do I need to do anything to email settings with the site, etc. Right now these scripts are essentially a black box to me and I want a better understanding of how they function

I figured the best approach after getting answers here would be to build a simple bare bones test site with this functionality and then try to implement it on my live site so I look forward to your answers and I am happy to clarify any of this further. Please note, I am not looking for you to code this for me...I honestly want to learn how to do everything that is involved in this as I am very much a "teach me to fish" type of person and while I don't know a ton of PHP yet, I tend to pick up fairly quickly on how to code specific things and hack snippets together even if I don't know a ton about the language.

Also, my preference for this is to keep it doable while utilizing XAMPP so that means PHP (MySQL if necessary) and CSS/html. Thanks AskMeFi!

Innovative Book Designs

0bvious — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 04:37:46 -0800

Innovative Books: I am looking to compile a list of the most innovative uses of the book format. Books that break the mould in their layout and design, perhaps books that use online systems to extend their content value or push their form into new places. I am most interested in narrative and theory, but any book that is interesting (artist books etc.) would be really appreciated. I have a few examples, in order of publication, to set the ball rolling:

Compendium for literates : a system of writing by Karl Gerstner - A book about book form in an innovative form. Beautiful and still fresh

Dictionary of the Khazars: a lexicon novel in 100,000 words by Pavic - a 'dictionary novel' "written in two versions, male and female, which are identical save for seventeen crucial lines"

A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel by Tom Philips - an artist who has used one particular edition of one particular book as a space for his work for many years

The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet by Reif Larson - extended use of footnote, side-note and illustration to give the narrative dimension

I would love any ideas you have!

Using Base & numbering

Salmonberry — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:10:29 -0800

Auto-generated numbers using Open Office base. Can it pick up where I left off? Hi there. I'm trying to create a simple database for storing purchase orders. Right now everything is done in Excel and information has to be re-input in 4 different spreadsheets. So I am attempting to build something I can use.

Currently we're up to PO number 1525. Ideally I'd like to have Base start with order number 1526 & keep going from there. Is that possible? And I'd like that PO number to be the primary key to avoid dupes. Is that also possible? I've looked high and low and can't get it to auto-generate without getting errors when adding a new record.

Thanks!

You've GOT the see this movie!

grumblebee — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:05:06 -0800

Is there an web app via which people can recommend things (movies, music, books, etc.) to me? I feel a bit stupid asking this, because something this obvious must exist, and I should know about it. But I don't.

What I want is this:

A friend of mine goes to (say) recommend.to/grumblebee. He fills out a simple form indicating that he thinks I'd like a book called "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. If he wants, he can write why thinks I'd like it, and he can (optionally) post a link to the book on Amazon.

I can check the page for recommendations, or I can opt to get an email whenever anyone recommends things to me.

IMPORTANT: I would like a low-bar-of-entry. I don't want friends of mine to have to sign up. They just go to the page, fill out the form, press POST, and they're done.

Also, I don't want this to be part of a social-networking site. Not everyone is on Facebook (really!).

I want this, because lovely people are always recommending things to me. They make these recommendations through a bewildering number of channels: email, Facebook, Twitter, IM... Inevitably, I lose track of them and can't find them when I need them.

I'd like to "train" my friends to shoot stuff to recommend.to/grumblebee. If it's something they have to join, many of them will not do it. But if it's a simple form, it shouldn't be a problem.

Basically, it would be like a delicious page for me -- but one created by friends of mine.

How do I create a "fill in form" on Adobe?

genniangel0 — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 07:53:05 -0800

How do I create a "fill in form" on Adobe with text boxes and check boxes? I have a pdf that I am trying to modify so that the user can tab through and fill in the form. I can't figure it out. I want to be able to not only fill in text boxes...but a check box feature as well. Any ideas? I'm using Acrobat 6.0

Income Tax Question

Kam1761 — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:43:46 -0800

We live in the state of Alabama. My son is 18 and a full time college student. He is starting a part time job to help with school. He will be making minimum wage and will work 20 or so hours per week. We are filling out his paperwork and came across the "Alabama Dept. of Revenue Employee's Withholding Exemption Certificate" http://www.ador.state.al.us/Withholding/FA4(01_07).pdf Would this apply to my son or do we leave it blank?

Please help me set up some Access forms.

philomathoholic — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:41:34 -0800

I have two questions about setting up MS Access forms: 1) Currently, I have a form to enter the volunteer id, shift start time and shift stop time, but the client doesn't want to have to look up the id in a report. Is there a way to create a selection list from the volunteer's names? What other options are there? 2) On the "add/edit a volunteer" form, I'd like to be able to choose tasks from a selection list. The tasks table has id and name. The "tasks of volunteers" join table has volunteer id and task id. How do I set this up? I can't seem to get the right combination of configurations. Additional information:
1) The shifts table only has those three fields, and I don't want to make the volunteer's name a primary key.
2) I don't want to resort to adding the booleans TaskSort, TaskPrep, ..., to the volunteers table, since that's not how databases are supposed to be set up. When I try to use a select query, I get "SELECT ..." as one of my options.

* It's Access version 2003.
* I'm just using standard forms (ie. not "Pages").
* I'm pretty sure I've created the tables in a "best practices" way, but since I'm creating this database from scratch, I can create anything however I want.
* I think I know about database theory pretty well, and that's not what this question is about.
* But, I'm new to Access, so it's likely I'm missing something easy.

Thanks.

How do I create an online poll which users can permanently add to?

kmccormi — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:41:10 -0800

How can I create an online HTML form poll, preferably for free, wherein the list of multiple choices can grow when users decide to add to the list of choices? Many poll creators allow for the creation of multiple choice polls that give the viewer the option of selecting "other" with a text field for comments. However, usually this entry does not then become visible to viewers who visit thereafter.

I want my list of choices to be able to grow. If a user sees an existing choice that he likes, he can add his vote to that one, but if he doesn't see an existing choice I would like him to be able to add that choice permanently to the list. Any user who visits afterward will see his choice in the list and be able to vote for it.

I also would love for this poll to be clean, ad-free, and preferably embeddable into a blog or personal site. Does anything like this exist? Thanks.

How to Print the Interactive Fields in an Interactive Form

kristymcj — Tue, 05 May 2009 10:55:26 -0800

How do I get this fillable form PDF to print the information in the interactive fields. If I click "highlight fields" the information is there, but when I print it's gone. I'm working in Acrobat 7.0. The form was created by someone else (I don't know what she was working in).

Art, design, technology

Your Time Machine Sucks — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 03:23:01 -0800

Please recommend some sites to me that are focused on art and design and are technology-friendly to boot. Hello,

I am looking for sites (blogs or online magazines or similar) which have design and/or art as their focus, but which are tech-friendly in those areas and where it wouldn't be surprising to read about an unusual or well-designed UI along with good industrial design examples or art installations. Which are your favorites? Disclosure: I'm asking a) because I adore that kind of site and always want to find more, and b) because I think there is a possibility that sites with that focus might be interested in a project of mine.

Thank you very much!

Wordpress Plugins / Addons: Looking for Product viewer (non ecommerce) module + contact form.

spinko — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 04:52:30 -0800

Wordpress Plugins / Addons: Looking for Product viewer (non ecommerce) module + contact form. A friend wants a site, wants to showcase products like on ecommerce sites but without the payment terminal. Just showing the product information.

Is their a plugin for Wordpres that will allow this.

Show products in a category
Upload product picture (auto thumbnail + normal image)
Contact us form

Need an instant quote web form that instantly calculates quotes!

thewibbler — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:01:56 -0800

Does anyone know of a php script that can be used to easily generate a web form, and that can have a "calculation" box at the bottom, that will calculate a cost based on the previous response fields? I'm looking to have a quote form on my site that can instantly give visitors a quote for my services!

Send a templated email from a website where the template is hosted elsewhere?

doomtop — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:44:55 -0800

Send a templated email from a website where the template is hosted elsewhere? I want to setup a website that hosts a templated email form that someone can fill out their name and their friend's email address and it will send the templated email to their friend and fill in the variable of their name so the friend knows who sent it. Standard stuff, I think.

However, I would like to put the actual form itself on a completely different website because on this different website I will have much less access and can only post HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc. and not actually store a template or anything like that.

Is there an easy way to do this? Everything I've seen so far would require both the form and the templated data to be in the same place.

Dealing with nested floats in CSS?

Wild_Eep — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:08:36 -0800

Care to help a CSS newbie with float-related positioning issues? I'm trying to add a form to my WordPress site via the FormBuilder plugin, but the form jumps below the two floated sidebars rather than directly after the post text. FWIW, I'm using the Cordobo Green Park theme.

I've got FireBug installed and I've been attempting to determine what indeed is going on, but this problem exceeds my meager CSS skills.

I'm pretty sure that the 'clear:both' property is in here when it shouldn't be, but the form elements are floated-left, and I haven't found the proper combination

When I emailed the author of the FormBuilder plugin, I received this response:

"I've been looking at your site, and it seems to be related to a lot of quirkiness with your template system. The clear tags seem to be interfering with the display of the sidebars and affecting the content.

I tried messing around a bit with the CSS in firebug but wasn't able to get it to look quite right.

I suspect it might work better if you were able to put the comments div inside the entry div. Not sure though, just a thought."

Good guide to investment taxation.

bsdfish — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:54:25 -0800

Taxfilter: I am looking for a nice guide to US taxes that strikes a balance between 'Your First Tax' and 'US Section 52612.3524.23p.' I am particularly interested in investment taxation -- both the rules, procedures and suggested strategies. Though if someone can answer a specific question -- what California form is the equivalent of IRS form 1045 -- that would be handy too. I have looked at "Investment taxation : practical tax strategies for financial instruments " and it's quite interesting. Yes ... believe it or not, I think taxes are interesting. Any other resources that are deep, cover exotic strategies, but are instructive and not just a hardcover-bound version of the legal code? And I am somewhat interested in the mechanics of filing: again, I'm reasonably competent at math so hand-holding is not required, but pointers to correct forms, correct lines (ie, classification) to record a gain/loss on, etc would be nice.

My specific question that inspired this, and that I would love to get answered as well, is the following: I am likely to have sufficient section 1256 loss this year to be able to carry it back against last year's gains. What California form would I need to file to get this to happen? IRS Form 1045 is the federal version, but the state one isn't obvious. I understand that filing a revised tax return may be an option ... but ewww.

The broader question is that I can't be the first one to encounter this question, yet the internet seems to have no mention of it. So I suspect there's a nice dead-tree book somewhere for me. After all, any accountant worth his salt knows this, and she had to learn somewhere!

Why won't a PDF's form fields print?

Ikazuchi — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 06:22:49 -0800

I have a PDF form that I modified from an existing PDF form, adding a new page and a few new fields. The new fields I added are visible on the screen but not visible when I print the form. Other parts of the form work fine, it is only 4 text fields I added. Other checkboxes work and show up fine. I am fairly inexperienced with editing PDFs and using LiveCycle Designer (I have version 7) and can't figure out what the heck I'm missing and I can't extract anything from the help guide.

You fill out a form, then see where everyone else is from who also filled out the form.

Wild_Eep — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 08:08:24 -0800

Is there a WordPress plugin that will let me make forms for people to fill in, and then dump the results to the database instead of emailing the results to me? I want reports with Google Charts (specifically the US and World maps). There are at least a dozen different survey/questionnaire/poll/form plugins, but nearly all of them merely email submissions to a given address.

I want to be able to maintain real-time statistics about who has filled out a form so that I can tie it to the APIs from Google Chart and produce maps for my site. Ideally once I set this up, it should run without any interaction from me. (No exporting data to create a report manually). I'm not worried about spoofing for now.

So far I've only found two contenders:

Surveygizmo, which is close but doesn't seem to support the mapping report that I'm interested in.

SurveyFly, which hasn't been updated to support recent versions of WordPress.

Is there something out there that I'm missing?

One form to rule them all...

freudenschade — Thu, 01 May 2008 11:57:21 -0800

Creating a form template for colleagues to use at work that needs to meet the following criteria: 1. Allow text fields and drop-down selection boxes. 2. Allow users to add additional text in should they see fit (i.e. doesn't disallow all input outside of form fields). 3. Will allow rows (the form will be arranged like a table) to be duplicated/copied & pasted, including the form fields contained within those rows. 4. Is formatted nicely enough to be passed along to a client and read clearly. 5. Is openable/usable by your average user who doesn't have access to super expensive/specialized software. What program/functions should I be using to create such a document?

I tried Word 2003, but it seems that using form fields requires you to "lock" the document, allowing no editing after the form structure is saved as a template. I had some success with Word 2007 (and its updated form functions), but everyone else in my office uses Office 2003, and even Microsoft's fix that supposedly allows 2003 users to open/edit/save 2007 files still won't allow for opening of DOTX (Word 2007 template) files. Acrobat seems out of the question because PDFs also only allow editing/input within form fields.

Is there something I'm missing in Word 2003 that would make it work for me? Other options? Help, please.

I've stopped my web form spam. What am I missing?

fantabulous timewaster — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:23:50 -0800

I seem to have stopped form spammers from cluttering a business inbox. Have I set myself up for some more mysterious problem down the road? The website for my wife's dog training business has some "contact us" and "schedule an appointment" forms, which send email through the venerable cgiemail. Shortly after we added these sometime last fall, spammers began sending messages by POSTing directly to the emailer. I was able to stop these robots by changing the name of a required field on the form. After half a dozen name changes over six months or so, we finally got found by a robot smart enough to check the form first, began getting fifty or sixty junk messages a day.

The standard approach to this problem seems to be the addition of a "captcha." I decided against a captcha for three reasons:

I'd have to change my backend to something that can validate a captcha. This probably isn't much of a hurdle.
I'd have to trust the new backend. This takes a little thought, depending on how much of it I would have to write.
Some potential customers might, like me, dislike squinting at captchas. We don't want to lose their business.

I think the third of these is a different goal than most people have. I don't want "no spam ever" or "fanciest web doohickey ever"; I want "no missed messages" and "minimum work." An occasional bit of junk doesn't pose a problem; the problem arises when there's enough junk to make my wife overlook the handful of legitimate messages. So before the final required field, I included the output of

echo "<!--"
head -c$((128*1024)) /dev/urandom | uuencode - | tr "<>" " "
echo "--&gt"

a few times. Now the HTML making up the form is about 700 kb long. This makes viewing the form once no more painful than viewing a graphics-heavy page, but my fifty-a-day form spammer has decided I'm not worth a 30 Mb download and gone away. Success! Now: how could someone break this?

Obviously, sending extra junk counts towards our bandwidth limit. But our limit right now is generous enough that getting close to the limit would take a distributed effort; I think we're a sufficiently low-value target that this is unlikely. The same logic makes me not too worried about loading the server --- the loop waits for the output to go out the network before making more. I'm not parsing any input. I can't think of any other server-side problems.

So, hive mind: what problems should I expect on the client side? Now that so many people have broadband, do I need to worry about sending a 700k HTML comment? Are there browsers that won't display the top of the form (where you type things) while the bottom loads? This trick does what I want very effectively --- what does it also do that I don't want?

(there's a link in my profile if you want to see the real deal)

Examples of Mise en Abyme (in form)

0bvious — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:57:37 -0800

Recursion filter: I recently came across the phrase 'Mise en Abyme' and have become fascinated by recursion in literature, language and film. What writings have used these themes in their form to address the questions they posed? The idea of presenting the form of a text/film/critique so that it exemplifies the question posed fascinates me (so for instance, if I asked 'what is recursion?' and my essay contained a footnote which refered back to the text which then refered back to the footnote, then in some simple sense I have a form of recursion in my essay).

What writers, film-makers etc. have integrated aspects of Mise en Abyme into their work in this exemplary manner? (I am more interested in non-fiction pieces, but realise that a lot of fiction out there which has used this technique are formally very unique.)

I have a copy of Gödel, Escher, Bach sitting on my bookshelf, staring at me. I am also well versed in the works of Foucault, Barthes and Derrida.

Thanks for reading

Site that will help me, um, cite.... (ugh, I've got nothin')

numinous — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 07:02:04 -0800

[Attention-Citation-Officers-Filter]: I am clueless as to the proper way of citing financial documents in the course of my writing. The Chicago Manual of Style has left me high and dry. Hope me! I'm having difficulty finding out how to accurately cite financial documents. Specifically, I need to cite information from a non-profit organization's 990 form. I am citing several figures from this tax document. I've searched various terms, such as citation+financial+report+document+writing etc., with every coupling and configuration in between. No. Dice.

So, my multifaceted question:

Is there a cut-and-dried template of citing data from a tax document in expository writing? For both note and bibliographical references? In a way that is consistent with (or at least acceptable by) the Chicago Manual of Style? Are there any websites dedicated to illustrating this type of citation? If so, which ones?

Also, WHERE CAN I FIND AN EXAMPLE, PLZ.

All suggestions welcome. Seriously. This is driving me nuts.

Validating data on a pledge form

jbickers — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 04:53:43 -0800

Javascriptfilter: Building an online donation form, and need some hand-holding. Our non-profit is gearing up for membership drive, and we want to add "thank you gifts" (a la PBS) to our contribution page. The contribution page already exists and works; people type in the amount they want to give into a text field, with suggested giving levels out to the side.

But we want to add a list of "premiums" - DVDs, books, etc - that are only available at certain giving levels. So if you give $250, you get your choice of the DVD, book #1 or book #2; if you give $120, you can only choose between the two books.

We want all of the items to be displayed (so that people can see what they'd get if they upped their gift), but need some kind of validation logic that sends them back to the form with an error message if they choose a gift that is above their giving level.

Can you help with this? I'm guessing Javascript/Ajax is the answer, but my skills in the former are weak and in the latter are nil.

WP image submit with captcha?

zenpop — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:15:24 -0800

Kinda strange Wordpress plugin request: We're looking for a contact form with image submission that also employs a captcha or similar form of validation. Our blog allows folks to submit images for 'critiquing.' Lately the spambot freakazoids have found us and the erectile dysfunction ads are now rife. Hourly. Ugh.

We've posted to WordPress forums but no one seems to know of a plugin that allows for image submissions and includes a captcha process.