Accessibility and Usability Forum

Using text field allows you more control over checking each input.

If you use standard input names (name, street) for each textfield then some browsers will 'auto-majically' pre-populate the form.

There was an attempt at stadardising form names way back in the mists of time. RFC2706 [ietf.org] and RFC3106 [ietf.org]
eg
<input type="text" name="Ecom_ShipTo_Postal_Name_First" />

The above form names do work. Or at least they did the last time I checked.

Make sure theres a logical focus to each field, meaning if someone presses tab it goes from first name, second name, streetname, town etc.

Use the label tag and make sure it applies to the correct form field.

Absolutely, but it would mean a lot more work for you. Either a human would need to read the text, or you would need some kind of smart parser. An AJAX filler that worked on a zip lookup would be kewl as well. I've seen these used. They fill in the town and state fields.

I used to have a problem report page on a site I did. It had all kinds of fields that helped track down what the exact problem was, etc.

Everybody started using the regular contact form to report problems. I think the form only got used once.