appi2 - 5:01 pm on Feb 28, 2007 (gmt 0)

If everyone just put the address then a text area would be the easy option.
But you know what them humans are like.

121 street happy village USA please tell posty to put the parcel behind the blue car next door. My cat says hello.

plus all the other wonderful things users do.

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.

And read these tuts
[webstandards.org...]