form text field submit

[BEFOR]

I've noticed that many of the search forms, where with a text field submit -- when you click while an empty text field the "submit" button -- all possible search results are listed. A mounting list.

How can this be prevented? Beside setting an initial "value" to a php echo, etc. All the user needs to do is remove this, leave blank and hit the big submit .

Is javascript the answer? Noticed Yahoo responds to this with:

"Your search box was empty. Please enter one or more words in the box above."

Monster.com will list 5000 job listings

[TheDefender]

Several ways...

1) Using JavaScript client-side to do a form validation. If the field is blank, popup a box using JS to tell the user they can't leave the field blank. (Outside the scope of these boards)

2) Use PHP on the submitted form to limit the results to a predetermined # of results, and echo a message to the user to tell them to narrow their search to get more specific results. This can also be effective to limit single letter searches (like T) or common letter combo searches. (like es)

3) Use PHP on the submitted form to simply check the value of the input and if it is empty, then echo an error to the user to go back and put something in the field.

Post back if you need help with 2 or 3. Otherwise, if you want to go with the JS option, you should post in a JS forum to get better help.

[BEFOR]

door # 3 please, would be very nice.

already have javascript on the page and it may be conflicting with text field validator as I've tested

currently this for the text field submit:

<form action="s99.php" method="get" name="form5">

                            <input name="menu8" type="text" value="" size="20">
              <input type="submit" name="Submit" value="find ">        

      </form>