"Mary Ellen Curtin" <mecurtin@NOalumni.SPAMprinceton.HEREedu> wrote:
[color=blue]
> I'm looking for a CSS-focused tutorial on laying out forms --
> AFAICT the ones from
www.allmyfaqs.com are HTML-only.[/color]
There are three distinct topics around forms: form data processing
(including useful feedback to user), which is the tough part; HTML
markup, which is rather trivial, though it has lots of details; and the
optional presentational issues, primarily CSS styling, which is
relatively complicated, since the specifications are somewhat obscure
(as regards to what CSS properties mean when applied to form fields)
and browsers are faulty and buggy. For the latter, which is what you
are looking for, I can suggest my review which discusses both HTML and
CSS methods for affecting form appearance and which is relatively old:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/forms/present.html
[color=blue]
> If the
> tutorial is geared toward the Windows-enslaved, so much the better.[/color]
Well, in the WWW context, you should try and forget what platform you
work on, except as regards to authoring _tools_ you use.
[color=blue]
> Is it "cheating" to say, "the form data is going into a database,
> so it makes sense to use a table for layout"?[/color]
The premises are wrong but the conclusion is correct. :-) Whether form
data goes into a database is irrelevant when considering whether the
form itself is tabular. And forms often have tabular parts, since e.g.
a collection of form field label and form field pairs logically
constitutes a matrix. It would not mean using a table for layout,
though you it would, en passant, result in tabular presentation on most
browsers. But other than table markup can be used, too.
--
Yucca,
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/ 
