Adding Scrolling Text Regions to a Form

Use scrolling text fields when you need people to enter information by typing and you expect them to enter more than a few words. For instance, you would probably provide a scrolling text region for people to type the content of an email message.

  1. Click the scrolling text region button in the Form Tool window.

  2. Enter a name for this item in the Field Name field.

    This name does not appear on the form; it's stored in the HTML file. The cgi-bin script uses this name to identify the information collected from that field.

  3. Enter a number in the Rows field.

    This determines how many lines of text display in the field. For instance, if you type 3, only three lines are displayed. If the text area contains more than three lines, the person who views the form in a Web browser must scroll to view them.

  4. Enter a number in the Columns field.

    This determines the width of the text area. It's measured in characters. If you want the field to be wide enough to display 10 characters, type 10 in the field.

  5. In the Value field, type the text you'd like to have appear by default.

    If you leave this field blank, the scrolling text region is empty by default.

  6. Click the Apply button to place that text area on the page.

    Once the text area is on the page, you can add text to it directly.