The Online Form Builder Blog

FormSmarts Soon in More Languages

We’ve started to translate FormSmarts’ form handler into other languages. When the international version is released, form users will see instructions, error messages, and confirmation messages in their preferred language.

International form owners will welcome this move, but not only them.

• FormSmarts users with international websites will be able to create forms in English, while making them available to an international audience without any extra efforts;
• a U.S. user with a preferred language set to Spanish in his browser will see messages in that language.

Note that the internationalization in progress only applies to the form processor at this time. At the rate we introduce new features to the form builder, we wouldn’t be able to keep translations in sync.

We’ve already emailed international users to ask anyone able and willing to translate FormSmarts into their own language to sign up. If you would like to contribute but didn’t get the email, please register here.

Update: We would like to thank all the users who have already volunteered to translate FormSmarts into their language. Our most wanted languages are currently:

• Chinese (Simplified) / 中文 (简体)
• Japanese / 日本語
• Russian / русский
• Italian / italiano
• Polish / polski
• Korean / 한국어

Posted on September 16th, 2008 in form handler.
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Tags: international, upcoming

Get More Fields for Your Forms

As a user of the standard (free) web form service, you can increase the number of fields you can use on your forms by inviting your friends to FormSmarts. We’ll award you one extra field for each legitimate person you refer to FormSmarts.

If you need even more fields, you should upgrade your account.

Earning referral points is easy:

1. Start earning referral points right now by inviting your friends and colleagues to FormSmarts from the Settings tab of your account (Referrals option);
2. Introduce your visitors to FormSmarts from your website or Facebook page using the referral link shown in your account.

Any questions about referral points? Post a comment below.

Posted on September 6th, 2008 in Smarts Points.
6 Comments »
Tags: Smarts Points

Calling Embedded Form Users!

Form Widget Size Calculation Upgraded

To accommodate users who need to create forms with a large number of fields, we’ve recently introduced a much more sophisticated way to calculate form widget size. If forms on your site currently display a scrollbar, we strongly advise you to upgrade the form embedding code.

Refresh the Code on Your Website When You Add a Field

Once you have inserted the HTML code for the form widget on your site, we cannot resize it at our end. That means that whenever you add more input fields, you must refresh the code on your website. If you don’t do it, a scrollbar may show up, and some users may not be able to see the bottom of the form.

Space at the Bottom of Web Forms Is Normal

The spare space at the bottom of web forms is there for a reason: leaving enough space for error messages that may occur during form submission. Here again, if you remove that space, a scrollbar may show up, and some users may not see the bottom of the form.

Optimizing form widget size is not a simple issue because it depends on the rendering characteristics of the diverse web browsers, as well as on the different aspects of each form. If you believe the size of a form you’ve created is not optimal, let us know.

Posted on August 15th, 2008 in form builder.
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Tags: widget

Introducing Form Layouts

We’re pleased to now support two form layouts.

Question (a.k.a. field name) and input field aligned horizontally (default):

Question and input field aligned vertically:

Which Layout Should You Use?

Most people find web forms designed with the first layout clearer and easier to read. That’s why we use it by default whenever you create a form.

The best layout to use depends on the length of the questions asked on the form.

• When a form is made of short questions like name or email address, prefer the first layout. This is what you should use, for example, for contact forms.
• When the form contains longer questions like Why do you want to work for us?, you should rather use the second layout. It turns out that you should use the second layout for most complex forms like web surveys and job application forms.

How to Change the Layout of a Form

You can change the layout of a form in the form details page. Note that if you’re using a form widget embedded into your site, you must update the HTML code on your site whenever you switch layout.

This is simply because the layout affects the size of the form. Forms accessed by their FormSmarts.com URL don’t have this restriction.

Any Feedback About Form Layouts?

We welcome your feedback about this feature.

Posted on August 14th, 2008 in HTML form.
9 Comments »
Tags: form design, usability, widget

Stored Form Results

Whenever someone uses one of your forms, we email you the form submission straight away. That is, at this time, the only way we support for you to access form results.

That’s great if you need to collect time-sensitive information that needs to be processed individually. For example, for contact forms or order forms.

For most individuals and small businesses, their email account is where data is safest. Free email services like Gmail or Yahoo give you reliable data storage, that’s an advantage that is often overlooked.

But sometimes what you want is really to collect form data, store it somewhere, and use it later. That’s what you need for medium and large scale surveys, registration forms, and the likes.

Stored form results is the next big thing coming up on FormSmarts.

What Will Change with Stored Form Results?

When this feature becomes available, you’ll have the option to store form submissions on FormSmarts. You’ll then be able to download them, export them to Microsoft Excel, get them emailed to you weekly, or get them via a private RSS feed.

Stored Form Results will only be available to FormSmarts Pro customers. Users of the free service can however get a free upgrade to FormSmarts Pro if they earn enough SmartsPoints, FormSmarts’ reward scheme.

Anything to Say?

We’re open to suggestions about other ways to let users retrieve stored form data.

Posted on August 5th, 2008 in form handler.
2 Comments »
Tags: stored form results, upcoming

Date Type & Datepicker

Anyone using a standard text field for dates should upgrade to the new date type.

Fields with the date type show as a text box, with a datepicker poping up when the field is selected. A datepicker allows users to input dates in an intuitive and interactive way, therefore reducing the risk of errors.

Date Format

Another reason for using a datepicker is to alleviate the date format problem. Because of date formatting differences, 12/07/2008 means December 7th in the U.S., but July 12th in Europe. Although we initially thought of adopting the ISO/W3C date format “yyyy-mm-dd”, we eventually preferred the U.S. format “mm/dd/yyyy”. That is, until we release an internationalized version of FormSmarts.

Because users don’t interact directly with the text field (unless they want to), but rather with the datepicker, they don’t have to be aware of date formatting issues.
To avoid any misunderstandings, dates are displayed as Sunday July 20, 2008.

Any questions or comments? Leave a reply. We are in particular interested in feedback from non U.S. users.

Posted on July 20th, 2008 in form handler.
2 Comments »
Tags: email notification, form handler, input field, international, web forms

Geolocalized Country Selection Field

We’re going to add over the week-end two new input field types: country, and date. You should upgrade any web forms currently using a standard text field for country or date to the new types.

When to Use the Country Type

Choose the country type whenever you want to show on a form a dropdown list with the 280 odd ISO country names.

Visitor Country Selected by Default

A country list field is typically used to ask the visitor about his/her country of residence. You’ve certainly already experienced the frustration of having to search for your country in a long list each time you fill out a form. At FormSmarts, we want to save time to everyone, so the visitor’s country is automatically selected by default.
That way, users only have to change the selection if the question asks them about a country different from their country of residence. For example, “Where did you travel last time you went abroad?”

Reducing the time needed to fill a form helps reduce form abandonment.

Any questions or comments? Leave a reply.

P.S. We’ll present the date type in another post.

Posted on July 17th, 2008 in form handler.
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Tags: form handler, geolocalization, input field, web forms

What’s the Return URL of a Form?

When creating a new form with FormSmarts Form Builder, you’re asked to provide a return URL for that form. The return URL is where visitors will be automatically redirected to or invited to go to (by clicking a link) after a successful form submission.

We also use return URLs to compute the list of websites in Settings > Websites.

If you don’t have a web page, simply use “http://formsmarts.com” as the return URL.

Return URL & Form Ownership

To prevent abuse, the link to the return URL is only displayed on the confirmation page if the form owner is verified or is a FormSmarts Pro or FormSmarts Business user. Visit the Settings tab of your account to verify your sites.

Redirecting Visitors to a Page of Your Site

You can set up a form to skip the Confirmation page and automatically redirect the visitor to the form’s Return URL. Note that the visitor will then not get the FormSmarts Reference Number of the transaction. Redirection can be activated in the Form Details screen of the form builder, under On Submission. FormSmarts Pro and Business customers only.

PayPal Landing Page for Forms Including a Payment

If you use our PayPal form feature to add a payment to your form, the Return URL will be used as the PayPal landing page. Users will be redirected to that page by PayPal after the payment has been completed.

Posted on July 11th, 2008 in HTML form.
20 Comments »
Tags: form builder, form owner, payment integration, paypal, return url, web forms, widget

Form Color Settings

Like many FormSmarts users, you may sometimes want to customize the style of your web forms. This may be because you want the forms to match the rest of your website, or because you want a form to stand out on a web page.

The form builder now allows you to change the text and background color of your forms. Visit the Form Details window in the Forms tab to set color preferences for a particular form.

Things to note:

• color settings only affect embedded forms, not forms access by their FormSmarts URL
• because your color settings are stored in our servers, you can change settings and see the result immediately. You don’t need to update the form code on your website.

How to Change Form Colors

1. By default, form text is black, and form background is transparent. This should fit the needs of most users, and if you’re happy with this, you don’t need to do anything.
2. If you do want to change a color, the easiest way is to choose one of the popular colors we’ve preselected. Just click on the color you want.
3. If you prefer to use your own colors, you may type any valid 6-digit HTML color code directly. For example, 808080 is a shade of gray.

Usability Note

It’s important to preserve the accessibility of your forms to visually impaired visitors, and their usability under poor reading conditions (e.g. bright sunshine). Always keep a high color contrast.

Posted on July 6th, 2008 in form builder.
7 Comments »
Tags: embed, form builder, usability, web forms, widget

Form Owner Verification with Google Page Creator

To verify you own a website, we ask you to create a file with a specific name on your web host. If you use Google Page Creator, proceed as follows to verify your site:

1. create a new page
2. enter the verification file name (e.g. syronex8800…2523.html) as the page title
3. publish the new page

Form ownership verification is optional but recommended to build trust with your visitors. It is required you intend to advertise a web form URL by email.

Recent Issues with Google Page Creator

Although hundreds of Google Page Creator users have successfully verified their site, we’ve had a few issues in the last few days. Google was redirecting some of the requests to googlepages.com to the same page on google.com, thus preventing us to check the verification file exists. We obviously have a limited scope for action, but we identified a likely cause and took technical measures that seem to have solved the problem. Leave a comment if you experience any more problems.

Posted on July 2nd, 2008 in form builder.
1 Comment »
Tags: embed, form builder, google page creator, widget

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