| Depr. | Version |
|---|---|
| No | HTML 2 |
| IE5.5+ | FF1+ | SA1.3+ | OP9.2+ | CH2+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full | Full | Full | Full | Full |
Syntax
Description
A form is
useless unless some kind of processing takes place after the
form is submitted. The action
attribute is used to inform the browser what page (or script) to call once
the "submit" button is pressed.
Example
Here, theaction
attribute tells the browser to send the form data to a
form-handling PHP page (which will presumably convert the form data to
something more email-friendly):<form action="form-to-email.php" method="post"
accept-charset="windows-1252">
<div>
<label for="txtname">Name:</label>
<input type="text" name="txtname" id="txtname"/>
</div>
⋮
</form>
Value
This element takes as its value a URL to a document that may be on the same server (for example, a shared CGI folder that has various form-processing scripts), or even a page or script on an entirely separate server (perhaps a free form-handling service).
Compatibility
| Internet Explorer | Firefox | Safari | Opera | Chrome | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.5 | 6.0 | 7.0 | 8.0 | 1.0 | 1.5 | 2.0 | 3.0 | 3.5 | 1.3 | 2.0 | 3.1 | 4.0 | 9.2 | 9.5 | 10.0 | 2.0 |
| Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full |
It causes no compatibility issues, and has excellent support across all tested browsers.
In
addition to allowing a URL value, some browsers will understand a
mailto: URL, which will open the email client on the
user’s computer and generate a new message, but this isn’t a particularly
slick way of managing form data. It’s a much better
approach to use server-side processing to ensure consistent behavior
across browsers.
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