While working with forms, I have found several things that should be improved.
allow radio buttons to be placed not only vertically but also horizontally in arbitrary positions
allow checkboxes to be placed freely
In case of a send error, the page scrolls automatically to the top of the page, which can be far from the position of the form. The user has then to scroll back manually to correct the form input. This is neither useful nor necessary and can be changed easily. You just need to replace the "#" anchor with the submit button that sends you to the top of the page, with an anchor pointing to the sector of the form itself, like "#sec-0846".
Allow more flexibility for the evaluation scripts of the forms.
When you create a new form, the editor also creates a new evaluation script that is specific to that form and evaluates the inputs of this form in a standard manner. If I want to do some additional evaluation (e.g. checking arrival and departure dates in a booking form for validity, checking the language that the sender used, or getting the country out of the IP number of the sender, there seems to be no way to do it. If I add some lines of PHP to the script, these lines will be wiped out the next time I update something else, be it on the same page or on another page, because when the project is updated, all pages and thus also all the scripts get updated. This could easily be overcome by having an "include" with a selectable file name in the script, so the user can add code through the included script.
The insertion of the include itself would be no problem at all, you just need to provide a small guideline on how to pass additional parameters that can show up in the message body. (I presume this could be done by adding elements to the array or maybe by creating another array just for these additional parameters. If this array is empty or does not exist, no additional parameters have to be examined.)
There could be an additional input in the editor for emails sent via PHP to define the name of this included script, and it could be created automatically, but should not be updated/overwritten automatically once it exists, If left blank, the "include" would be omitted and no file created. It could also automatically be created (but never overwritten) with a predetermined name similar to that of the script itself. If the web designer does not put any code in this file, nothing happens. The additional parameters should contain an error flag that would cause an error message to be shown on the web page in case of error (the error message itself could act as a flag: if it is blank, no error occurred), and another string that is added to the email body in case no error is marked.
In my example above, I could block the transmission from certain IPs or show the user that certain inputs (other than the email or phone format) are not correct, or even evaluate their input data and send them an adequate automatic answer directly from the server.have a more specific error message output on the form page. Right now, there are only a "Success" message and a generic error message shown, This does in no way help to understand why the submission was not successful. It should be possible to change the Failure output specifically with Javascript depending on the error type. You just need to add an id to the div of that message and address it with a small javascript.
Thank you.
While working with forms, I have found several things that should be improved. 1. allow radio buttons to be placed not only vertically but also horizontally in arbitrary positions 2. allow checkboxes to be placed freely 3. In case of a send error, the page scrolls automatically to the top of the page, which can be far from the position of the form. The user has then to scroll back manually to correct the form input. This is neither useful nor necessary and can be changed easily. You just need to replace the "#" anchor with the submit button that sends you to the top of the page, with an anchor pointing to the sector of the form itself, like "#sec-0846". 4. Allow more flexibility for the evaluation scripts of the forms. When you create a new form, the editor also creates a new evaluation script that is specific to that form and evaluates the inputs of this form in a standard manner. If I want to do some additional evaluation (e.g. checking arrival and departure dates in a booking form for validity, checking the language that the sender used, or getting the country out of the IP number of the sender, there seems to be no way to do it. If I add some lines of PHP to the script, these lines will be wiped out the next time I update something else, be it on the same page or on another page, because when the project is updated, all pages and thus also all the scripts get updated. This could easily be overcome by having an "include" with a selectable file name in the script, so the user can add code through the included script. The insertion of the include itself would be no problem at all, you just need to provide a small guideline on how to pass additional parameters that can show up in the message body. (I presume this could be done by adding elements to the array or maybe by creating another array just for these additional parameters. If this array is empty or does not exist, no additional parameters have to be examined.) There could be an additional input in the editor for emails sent via PHP to define the name of this included script, and it could be created automatically, but should not be updated/overwritten automatically once it exists, If left blank, the "include" would be omitted and no file created. It could also automatically be created (but never overwritten) with a predetermined name similar to that of the script itself. If the web designer does not put any code in this file, nothing happens. The additional parameters should contain an error flag that would cause an error message to be shown on the web page in case of error (the error message itself could act as a flag: if it is blank, no error occurred), and another string that is added to the email body in case no error is marked. In my example above, I could block the transmission from certain IPs or show the user that certain inputs (other than the email or phone format) are not correct, or even evaluate their input data and send them an adequate automatic answer directly from the server. 5. have a more specific error message output on the form page. Right now, there are only a "Success" message and a generic error message shown, This does in no way help to understand why the submission was not successful. It should be possible to change the Failure output specifically with Javascript depending on the error type. You just need to add an id to the div of that message and address it with a small javascript. Thank you.Last edited 29 September 2022 by v.piasta
