checkboxes on an order form

[Brian]

On a photographer's web site, I have a catalogue page that lists all
the photos available for purchase. It is marked up as a table, with 1
column for the image title, a second for the material on which it's
printed.

http://www.julietremblay.com/portfolio/catalogue.html

I want to convert this into the first part of an order/inquiry form,
so I added a third column with a checkbox. A user can then select the
photo(s), press a submit button, and, on a new page, enter contact
information.

two questions:

1.) Should I use the same control name for each checkbox? I'm having
a hard time getting them via php, and that made me wonder if I should
assign a different control name for each checkbox. (The form did
validate, so it's syntactically correct, and if I read the spec
correctly, it seems to be an acceptable choice.)

2.) The submit button is labelled "continue". Is there a better label
I might use?

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

[Eric Bohlman]

Brian <us*****@juliet remblay.com.inv alid-remove-this-part> wrote in
news:cOszb.2949 64$275.1015489@ attbi_s53:

On a photographer's web site, I have a catalogue page that lists all
the photos available for purchase. It is marked up as a table, with 1
column for the image title, a second for the material on which it's
printed.

http://www.julietremblay.com/portfolio/catalogue.html
IMHO, it needs to be (manually) broken up into two columns. It looks too
long and skinny.

I want to convert this into the first part of an order/inquiry form,
so I added a third column with a checkbox. A user can then select the
photo(s), press a submit button, and, on a new page, enter contact
information.

two questions:

1.) Should I use the same control name for each checkbox? I'm having
a hard time getting them via php, and that made me wonder if I should
assign a different control name for each checkbox. (The form did
validate, so it's syntactically correct, and if I read the spec
correctly, it seems to be an acceptable choice.)
I see no reason not to; from the server's viewpoint, it will look like the
results of a <select multiple ...> which would be a logically equivalent
way of accomplishing the task.

2.) The submit button is labelled "continue". Is there a better label
I might use?

"Proceed"? "Order"?

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Brian <us*****@juliet remblay.com.inv alid-remove-this-part> wrote:

http://www.julietremblay.com/portfolio/catalogue.html

I want to convert this into the first part of an order/inquiry
form, so I added a third column with a checkbox. A user can then
select the photo(s), press a submit button, and, on a new page,
enter contact information.
Sounds reasonable. You wish to let the user select as many items as he
wants, so checkboxes are a natural choice (and better than <select>).
1.) Should I use the same control name for each checkbox?
It's up to you - use the way you can handle easiest in the form
handler. In some server side techniques it might be more difficult to
deal with a set of name=value pairs that share the same name, but
mostly it's probably an asset.
(The
form did validate, so it's syntactically correct, and if I read the
spec correctly, it seems to be an acceptable choice.)
It's certainly permissible to have several checkboxes with the same
name.
2.) The submit button is labelled "continue". Is there a better
label I might use?

The text in the button should reflect the meaning (impact) of form
submission. On the other hand, it should be short. You could write a
longer explanation, if needed, before the button itself, e.g.

<div>Request more information about the items marked:</div>
<div><input type="submit" value="Get info"></div>

If the meaning is to initiate an ordering process, you could similarly
express this, and use "Order" or "Buy" as the button text - or
"Proceed" or "Continue" _if_ preceded by some note that says what this
means.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html