[RESOLVED] HTML Tags Element Question

ajar

I had to put a / after all my html input values right before the closing bracket to make my script work. Here's an example of what I mean.

<input name="name" type="text" id="name" style="font-size:13;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" size=45 />

Did I do something wrong or is this normally the way it works?

hitman6003

if your using strict xhtml standards, then yes.

ajar

I'm not, I guess. I just couldn't get it to work without them. What would you do in order to make it work without that element?

hitman6003

Hmmm, I'm not sure. Are you able to give us any more code?

LoganK

That's odd as to why it wouldn't work with the slash...do you mean the input field wouldn't render, or PHP gave you an error (without the slash)?

ajar

Ok. Here's my html form code. I'm just putting all of it since I'm not sure how much you needed to see. I'm sorry if I put too much.

<form method="post" action="contactform.php">
		      <table width="89%" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="2">
                <tr> 
                  <td width="25%"><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong>Name<font color="#CD0E2D">*</font>:</strong></font></td>
                  <td width="75%"><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> 
                    <input name="name" type="text" id="name" style="font-size:13;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" size=45 />
                    </font></td>
                </tr>
                <tr> 
                  <td><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong>E-mail<font color="#CD0E2D">*</font>:</strong></font></td>
                  <td><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> 
                    <input type=text style="font-size:13;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" name="email" size=45 />
                    </font></td>
                </tr>
                <tr> 
                  <td><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong>Day 
                    Phone:</strong></font></td>
                  <td><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> 
                    <input name="day" type="text" style="font-size:13;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" size="45" />
                    </font></td>
                </tr>
                <tr> 
                  <td><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong>Evening 
                    Phone:</strong></font></td>
                  <td><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> 
                    <input name="evening" type="text" style="font-size:13;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" size="45" />
                    </font></td>
                </tr>
                <tr> 
                  <td nowrap><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong>Best 
                    time to contact you:</strong></font></td>
                  <td><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> 
                    <input name="contacttime" type="text" style="font-size:13;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" id="contacttime" size="45" />
                    </font></td>
                </tr>
                <tr> 
                  <td valign="top" nowrap><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong>Questions 
                    or Comments:</strong></font></td>
                  <td><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> 
                    <textarea name="comments" style="font-size:13;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" cols=40 rows="4" wrap="physical"></textarea>
                    </font></td>
                </tr>
              </table>

          <center>
            <input type="submit" value="Submit" name="submit" />
            &nbsp; 
            <input type="reset" value="Reset" name="reset" />
          </center>
              </form>

As you can see, everything had to have the slash except the text field for comments and the form tag itself. I got no error without the slashes, I just didn't receive the message.

LoganK

I'm confused - you said without slash you didn't receive an e-mail message. That's something completely different than slashes on input fields.

ajar

I'm sorry. What happened is I didn't receive the e-mail message so I tried to figure out why. I did some research and found html forms that had slashes just before the closing tags except for text areas and the form tags. I added slashes to my html code, filled out the form again, and the e-mail arrived.

Does that make more sense or have I still blown the explanation?

LoganK

It makes sense but it should not affect the e-mail. Have you tested it again without slashes? The slashes are just there as part of the XHTML strict standards; if you do not put them in, it's not like HTML will not render or the W3C police will come screaming after you 😃...I've done it many times without slashes (in fact, I do that by default because that's how I learned HTML almost a decade ago), and it's never given me a problem.

ajar

You know what? You're right. I decided to test it after I posted and it worked just fine. :o I must've had something wrong with my script code when I first tested the form and I managed to fix that at the same time so I didn't know which thing had actually fixed the problem.

Thanks.

LoganK

That's why I always say (to my developers) - test, test test! Find those bugs! The best way is to test, change a little something, and test again. If you get the result you want after changing a bit, change back what you think is the error to ensure that it really is the error, lest you find yourself in a forum such as this 😃

Glad it worked out!