NetForms User's Guide: Installation and Basic Concepts

If you would like to jump right in to see how NetForms works, then your first step will be to install the demonstration "Recipe","Feedback" and "Mailing List" demos. Installing the examples will get you started and will also give you a working model to build your own systems from.

To Install NetForms, complete with the examples, simply drag the entire contents of the "NetForms 1.0" folder into your MacHTTP root folder. While MacHTTP will automatically start NetForms when it is needed, it is a good idea to double-click on it yourself to start the application. This will allow you to take care of any potential start-up problems that might occur (like not enough RAM, incomplete installation, etc.).

Once NetForms and MacHTTP are up and running on your server, use your browser to open the URL:

  http://your.server.address/NFStart.html

You will, of course, need to change "your.server.address" to the address of your server.

That's it! The examples should work right out of the box. Take a few minutes to enter a few recipes, feedback items, and mailing list forms to get comfortable with the concept of how users will be entering information. On the other hand, don't think that these examples encompass all that you can do with NetForms. NetForms was made, above all, to be flexible.


There are a few terms you should be clear on before you start. First, you should be completely familiar with MacHTTP and creating HTML documents. If you don't currently have a MacHTTP server running, or are unfamiliar with HTML, stop reading right now and look into these topics on the Web.

The first concept, which you are probably also familiar with, is that of Forms. The terms Entry Form, or simply Form, used in this documentation refer to the HTML document that accepts input from the users. The Form can contain fixed length text fields, scrolling text blocks, pop-up menus, and any other HTML supported input type.

This documentation will also refer to user written Articles. An article is entered into an entry form, and is processed by NetForms into a formatted HTML document viewable by other users. The word article may not be entirely accurate for the system you are creating, but is used to keep things simple. (For example, if you were creating a system for entering recipes, each recipe would be considered an article.) When a user enters an article into the system, this is known as Publishing. The Author is the person entering the article.

Perhaps most importantly, you will need a Form Definition, also known as your FDML document. This is the document that is used by NetForms to turn the data entered into the entry form into a formatted HTML document.


NetForms (C) 1994 by Maxum Development Corp.

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