Posts Tagged ‘embed’
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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
4 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:
- create a new page
- enter the verification file name (e.g. syronex8800…2523.html) as the page title
- 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
Text & Background Colors in Embedded Forms
As already mentioned in another post, we are soon going to allow FormSmarts users to customize the look of web forms. This applies in particular to embedded forms.
At this time, the form text color is black, and the form background is transparent. This leads to an issue when the page hosting the form has a black background. If you are affected by this problem, please contact us so we change the text color of your forms to white.
We welcome your suggestions about form look/style configuration options you would find useful, besides colors and border.
Posted on June 17th, 2008 in HTML form.
No Comments »
Tags: embed, web forms, widget
How to Embed a Form Into Your Site
Linking or Embedding?
FormSmarts supports two ways to integrate a form into your website or blog: linking and embedding. Embedding lets you place the form on your site alongside other content. Linking gives your form its own separate web page. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Many users think embedding the form into their site gives them more control. That’s far from always being the best option.
Embed a Form When…
- the web form is short — 3-4 input fields maximum
- it is self comprehensible and form filling instructions are not needed
Mailing list signup forms and simple contact forms work well embedded.
Link To a Form When…
- the form is long or complex
- the form is accessed both by web visitors and via a mailing list
- the form in intended for a large audience, that may be using a wide range of browsers and devices
- you expect a large number of form submissions
Event registration forms and survey forms perform better when accessed buy URL on their own page.
- forms accessed by URL load faster and are more scalable
- they are statistically more reliable
- they offer more flexibility
- there are no sizing issues
A word of wisdom: Resist the temptation to systematically embed web forms on your site for irrational reasons “because it gives you more (apparent) control”. Some web forms perform better on their own page.
Placing the Embedding Code On Your Site
To embed a form into your website, visit the Forms tab, and click Embed to see the form code.
Copy the HTML code, then paste it somewhere in the HTML source of the
host page on your website or blog. If you’re using an online service like Blogger, that’s
all you have to do. Otherwise, you need to publish the page to your web server.
A word of warning: do not try to save the form as an HTML page, and publish that page. This will not work. You must paste the code exactly as given. Do not attempt to alter, remove, or hide the mention “web form by FormSmarts”, or the link to our Privacy Policy. This would be a breach of our Terms of Use, and your account would risk to be terminated without notice.
Changing a Form, Once the Code Is on Your Site
Any changes you make to a form using the form builder will show up straight away on your website. You do not need to update the embedding code. As a result of adding more fields, the frame containing the form may however not be large enough, and you will then need to re-publish the embedding code on your site. See the section about Form Sizing below.
Customizing Your Form
The frame containing the form is transparent, which means the form background color will be the same as the background color of the hosting page.
We’re working to give you more control over the look of your forms, and we welcome your suggestions. Once available, you will be able to apply most customizations straight from FormSmarts. You won’t have to change the form code on your website.
Web Form Sizing
Why Is There Extra Space at the Bottom of the Form?
Forms are contained within an HTML frame (”iframe” for geeks). The frame has a fixed size, which is computed for each form, based on the number and type of fields used.
It is necessary to leave room for error messages that may need to be displayed during a form submission. That’s the reason for the extra space at the bottom of a form.
How Do I Get Rid of the Vertical Scrollbar
With time, you may have to add more fields to your form. Since the frame height is hard-coded into the code on your website, the form may no longer fit into the frame, and a vertical scrollbar will then appear. That is not desirable on a usability standpoint, so you are advised to update the code on your site whenever you add new fields, or change a text box to a text area.
A vertical scrollbar may also appear if the form has many questions.
You can get rid of the scrollbar by increasing the vertical size of the form widget. To do this, increase the value of the attribute height in the HTML snippet for the form (a.k.a. form embedding code.)
Only One Form Per Page
You cannot embed more than one form in a given web page.
Posted on May 21st, 2008 in HTML form.
14 Comments »
Tags: embed, form builder, howto, web forms, widget
