Online/offline ordering

I need a multiple choice form

[smokeyb]

I need to make some kind of contract/order form for a site offering.. let's say Interior decorating. The clients needs to be able to click choices for paint colour or wallpaper ect, and then send it to a company for work to commence (this is hyperthetical). I know I could use forms and CGI to achieve this, but as the clients would need time to decide their choices, I would prefer for them to be able to do it offline, so they can review it in their own time. Can anyone suggest the best way to do this? I have thought about making some kind of template in word, and if I did, is there a way to make it send itself via a link in the document? Also, this would assume that the clients already had MS word which is a bit presumtious, so could it be done with a HTML document that could be downloaded and then filled and sent back using a link, and also would be easy to print?
I don't even know where to start with this poser, can anyone help?
Many thanks in advance.
Smokey

[pbb00]

you could program the page entirely in javascript, so they can disconnect while filling in the form. this can be very tricky if you want it to work in (almost) any browser.
or, you could compile a application in a programming language like visual basic. this would assume your clients use m$-windows.

[shady]

I would have thought you could create the .html page, then email it to them.

They could then fill this in offline, then when they "submit" the email client will connect to the internet.

Regards
Shady

[DrDoc]

In general, you don't want to enable download of a form for submission later. What if they disassemble the page, and put something else together, and then send invalid data? You would have no session functionality, and you wouldn't be able to implement any other security measures.

May I suggest a different approach? Give the user enough time to browse your options, provide a "favorites" list to which they can add items they like, and retrieve later through some form of login. Once they are ready to order, they would choose from the items in their favorites. It's like putting together your own catalog - you only get the options you like, and then the decision process is a lot easier.

[smokeyb]

Excellent idea Shady, I could then enclose docs in other formats for print and snail mail. I thought about VB for a while but as the form would have to be easily updatable, it would be too cumbersome. All I need now is to figure out how to get it the email to autosend?
Thanks

[smokeyb]

Sorry I missed the DrDoc post. I like the idea DrDoc, but this is the final part of what the company is offering. You would of already seen enough text and examples to feed the 5000, and now all that remains is to part with some money. I personally hate buying things online because 5 minutes later I either: find a superior product or one a lot cheaper, and with sites like you have suggested, I tend to sit there for hours without commiting to anything. The real nature of the business is parent (as in "with children") orientated. I can envisage the whole family contributing to the decision, so offline makes it more... personal. But I can think of places I may be able to use your idea already, so many thanks for the advice.
Smokey

[DrDoc]

Well, the whole "e-mail autosend" functionality isn't too hard. You will use a <form> tag... So just make sure that the action attribute points to the right place ;)

[shady]

Hi DrDoc

Respectfully, is it not always advisable to perform server side validation? Personally, I never trust session variables to be correct and always implement the validation server side - doesn't everyone else?

Granted, a form could be edited by the user, but you could also duplicate an online form and edit that too.

[DrDoc]

I would hope that everyone does all final validation server side, and in a perfect world that would also be the case. I know I do, and I'm glad to hear that you do. But far too many people rely on poorly implemented security measures, such as client side only validation (JavaScript), taking for granted that data passed to a script is valid (not validating session IDs), assuming that the data comes from the form it is meant to come from...

[shady]

Glad to hear it DrDoc! I would shoot anyone (so to speak of course) that relied on Javascript! ;-)

[DrDoc]

Unfortunately, a site I took over a couple months ago relied on JavaScript only. They didn't let me convince them to dump the JS and use a server side solution...

So I grabbed Opera, disabled JavaScript, and submitted a ton of invalid data ;)
We have since fixed the problem :)