"On-line form", it sounds simple. We hear the following quite often. "Take my Word document form and put it on-line so customers can fill it out and send it to my email inbox." If it were only that easy.

Many things need to occur to make the magic happen. The form needs to be translated to HTML, formatted so it is easy for a user to complete, and it needs to be visually appealing. In most cases, this is a long process depending on how long the form is and how the data needs to be collected. Each of the form fields needs to be created. The form fields are assigned names and values. Radio buttons, check boxes, and other input elements need to be created and assigned names and values.

Don’t worry the magicians at The Webwright can do this for you. We even have some generic forms to start from. Keep in mind it takes time to create interactive forms. The more you need to customize, the longer the programming is going to take. We can even send the data to a database. This approach keeps all of the data in one place. Every time the form is completed, you receive an email letting you know that the form has been completed and you need to login to access the data.

"Wait a minute. What about Acrobat forms?"
It’s not hard to convert a Word document to an Acrobat PDF file. Once the file is created, the fields still need to be added to the document. Once again names and values are set. The appearance of the fields and content is set. Next the tabbing order is set. This allows users to jump to the next field by using the tab key.

Okay, the Acrobat file has been created and filled in. Now how is the data sent? In most cases the form needs to be saved to the user’s computer. The form can be attached to an email and sent. This will take a little more work for the user and may be too complicated for some users. If this is the direction you would like to take, The Webwright can create and prepare Acrobat files for you.