forms, making a pdf file downloadable and frontpage

[osisade]

Hi, I am new to a LOT of things and I have very little time to catch up. This is a great site and i have learnt a lot from the posts i have read. Number one lesson was learn html. Well i have a boss who is breathing down my neck to produce aprofessional looking website in a week and i started casually with frontpage about a year ago. i wish i had known better. that is to learn html first now i want to get things done fast and I dont know how. I have forms created in word and converted to pdf. My client wants pple to download the file to their system and return to them by post. How do i in frontpage make pple able to click on a link and have the file saved to their system without the file opening in acrobat first. Secondly, the client requires a few forms to be filled on the web. How do i get frontpage to save the file to an e-mail address i specify? the forms are in pdf. right now when i click on the link it opens in acrobat, i can fill it in but i dont know how to get submission to an e-mail address done automatically and then get frontpage to show a confirmation page. I hope my questions are clear. Can you please help? my neck is on the line!

osisade

[fish_eye]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

Sorry to be the bearer of sad news but neither of these is particularly easy. Being frontpage makes little or no difference.

My client wants pple to download the file to their system and return to them by post. How do i in frontpage make pple able to click on a link and have the file saved to their system without the file opening in acrobat first.

The only sure way of getting them to download without opening Acrobat is to suggest they "right click" (in Windows anyway) and "Save As" something-or-other. They can also save once Acrobat has opened.

Secondly, the client requires a few forms to be filled on the web. How do i get frontpage to save the file to an e-mail address i specify? the forms are in pdf. right now when i click on the link it opens in acrobat, i can fill it in but i dont know how to get submission to an e-mail address done automatically and then get frontpage to show a confirmation page.

I'm not familiar with frontpage but to do what you are asking requires writing code that runs on your webserver. This means learning about something like, Perl scripts, PHP or ASP. The choice to some degree depends on what type of system your web hosting company uses.

Send me a sticky mail and I can point you to some tutorials.

Your best bet (as far as your neck is concerned) is to do some research as to why this second request is not easy. By some miracle your boss may suggest giving you some time to do some training - but before you do - find out what kind of "server side coding" your hosting company supports.

You are scratching the surface of Web Development here... the topic is huge... but do not dismay - it can be great fun (even the frustrating bits) and you'll get tons of support here.

[fish_eye]

A warning about terminology too. The word "form" is very specific in web development. Whenever you type in a username and password (for example) you are using a "form".

The pdf "form" is just a thing created in Adobe that is printed and filled in. The form that creates an email that gets sent to you is a real live html form and is very different technology.

By the way - you can also make a very nice printable form with straight html (simple in frontpage I suspect) and people simply "file, print". Not everyone has Acrobat on their machines so this is a good alternative.

Sticky mail me for an example of a site where I've offered vistors a choice of either (and I'll also show you how easy it is to copy the code and re-use it).