Make user submitted data into a link - forms

I'm a bit of a newbie and I'm scratching my head over this one.
Here is what I want to do:
On my web page, I have an input form and a submit button.
I want users to input data to the form, click submit, and go to a page that uses the data the user input as the url.
For example, if a user inputs 'bob' and clicks submit, they would go to '../bob.html'.
Is this possible?
Thanks!

I think the task you have taken on cannot be solved with HTML, though I am not sure about HTML5. This sort of thing is generally done using Java/JSP, C#/ASP, Perl CGI, or any of a number of other options. Whatever you use will almost certainly involve a bit of programming effort and require a server running at your site.
I could be wrong, so try looking at http://www.w3schools.com/tags for a relatively complete list of HTML options. It also occurs to me that you might be able to do this client side using JavaScript. Once again you might try W3schools for some helpful tutorials or just a quick query in you favorite search engine will bring up lots of stuff to get you started. One problem with JavaScript is that many people turn it off in their browsers for security reasons.
Good luck.

Related

SurveyMonkey survey as in-page overlay/modal/lightbox

I've searched the SurveyMonkey website, both help... and developer..., as well as the general net and stackoverflow, and can't find any examples of a SurveyMonkey survey being displayed in an in-page overlay (referred to by some as a "lightbox" or modal).
I think what I need to use is SurveyMonkey's Embed option, as opposed to Invitation or Survey Popups:
http://help.surveymonkey.com/articles/en_US/kb/How-do-I-embed-a-survey-or-have-it-open-in-a-popup-window-on-my-site
I'd like that overlay div to appear, close, etc upon the same triggers as a regular survey would/could, that is open if the user has no previous SurveyMonkey cookie, close when completed or closed by user, etc.
I can probably hack through a solution by forcing the survey into a custom overlay I build, but the behaviors would be more tricky, probably having to read the SurveyMonkey cookie, I suppose. Or, perhaps I could check for certain IDs of SurveyMonkey content that exists at various stages to pull off the behaviors (but I'll have to look at the generated code throughout the process to know if this is an option).
In short, it seems like someone else has surely run into this issue before and likely that a solution has already been created, at least partial to save me some time. I just can't find it.
Here are some things I found on the embed itself:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/blog/en/blog/2013/04/23/how-to-embed-your-survey-on-a-website/
https://www.surveymonkey.com/blog/en/blog/2013/04/16/video-tutorial-how-to-embed-your-survey-on-a-website/
Any and all help much appreciated, pointers/resources, example code, etc. Thanks!

Form Analyzation and Suggestions

I was filling out a form on uSell.com to ship out an old phone and when I entered my address, a dialog box popped up telling me what I entered along with their suggestion of what to change it to. I thought this was cool and was wondering how I can replicate that in my forms.
Looks like you talking about some kind of auto-completer. This can be done in various ways, depending on the languages you are using. You can make a simple auto-completer using just html, javascript and css. More complicated auto-completers can make server side calls to search through a database etc.
Have a look at the link below, they explain a very simple auto-completer.
Related topic
Hope this helps, good luck :)

How can I program a button on an Access form to link to a browser window that looks up multiple addresses on Google Maps?

My problem is very similar to the one posted here:
http://www.utteraccess.com/forum/Plotting-Addresses-Maps-t1968130.html
except that thread never found any solutions. Basically, I'm working on an Access form that has a datasheet as a subform. Upon clicking a button on the main form I'm trying to make it so that a browser window opens up and, using the address columns from the spreadsheet data in the subform, plot all the address markers listed. I've looked up a lot of ways to attempt this but I've yet to find a way that seems to work.
I'm not even sure if it's possible to plot multiple markers on Google Maps, but according to research (and after trying it myself) it seems like it isn't, although I don't want to rule it out entirely because I'm still not 100% sure. However I know both Google Earth and batchgeo.com do allow this. I still want to try and do this on Google Maps, but if that doesn't work I want to try to do it using batchgeo.com and if that still doesn't work, then Google Earth (I don't want to make the user download external software if possible).
If it helps, from what I've read API's seem like a useful tool, though I'm not sure how to apply it to an Access form, it seems more like a way to embed to already existing websites.
I'd really appreciate if someone could help me figure out how to approach this problem!
Maybe this would help?
http://ramblings.mcpher.com/Home/excelquirks/getmaps/mapmarkers
It is Excel but should be translatable.
Here is another example, this time using Access:
http://www.utteraccess.com/forum/Google-Maps-Multiple-Mar-t1973499.html
...from what I've read API's seem like a useful tool, though I'm not
sure how to apply it to an Access form, it seems more like a way to
embed to already existing websites.
You're right. There's no way, that I'm aware of, to embed a Google Maps object in a form (like an ActiveX control). Microsoft MapPoint is a software product that lets you do Map integration by way of an ActiveX control (no need to use HTML and/or javascript).
What I usually do on a project like you're working on is I get my HTML page working the way I want it to, outside and independent of MS Access. You should be able to program and test the HTML file locally without having to use an actual web server. Just use something like NotePad++ or Sublime Text Editor 2 to write your HTML and Javascript and then open the file in your browser to see if it works. I'm quite sure you'll need to use Javascript in your HTML page to make this work. That's what the Google Maps API is all about.
After you have your webpage working, then you will have to go into Access and write code to create that web page on the fly with the address data for the current data set. You can just write it out to the Windows Temp folder and then open your browser control that that web page.
Julian Knight's answer links to more specifics on how to create the HTML page on the fly. It looks like gobble-de-gook, mostly because it is. Outputting HTML/Javascript/CSS from VBA is far less than optimal. This is why you troubleshoot it outside of Access, as much as you can.

Best alternative to drupal for small-scale sites

I recently started learning about drupal integration and because I wanted to learn how to create sites that I give to people with no html experience who want to be able to update their site. Through my research I learned that Drupal is the best supported CMS. It really does have a lot of nice features and accomplishes the job, but it almost has too many features for what I want.
I'm assuming there is some kind of open-source software for
I am an aspiring web developer trying to build my portfolio/gain experience. What I've been trying to do is build sites for clients that I can lose complete contact with--so when their store hours change and they have no HTML experience, I get emails about updating their site.
I figure there are three approaches: (tell me if there are more)
I write a php app that allows them to edit their site
I use a CMS (Drupal) to let them edit their site
I write scripts that embed text files formatted with {white-space: pre;}
I've so far implemented each method on 3 different sites, and they all work with drawbacks. I would prefer an open-source alternative to writing my own app for stability/security. Drupal seems more oriented towards allowing multiple users to add content, whereas I only want one user update existing content. The third option works well for computer-literate clients, but anyone who can navigate onto their server to change the file could probably figure out how to update the site without any of these approaches.
To sum up my problem, can anyone tell me the term I am looking for? Content Management System refers to the site framework for sites with a growing number of content posts (correct me if I'm wrong). What is the term for the site framework for editing sites with predefined but editable pages? If you could please tell me that, then I can at least research this question on my own. Otherwise, if you have any advice or solutions, they are much appreciated!
Thanks
user1470887, you've asked a great question. The answer, unfortunately, is that too many of the existing CMS products overlook this use case. It doesn't have an exact name as far as I know.
The term "in-place editing" describes one version of this (user clicks text on web page, block of text becomes a form, user edits contents and presses submit button, new text is sent to webserver and saved, and the form becomes normal text again). But I gather you would be happy with anything that lets them edit-existing but not create-new.
I'm also guessing you don't want to build your own Drupal module or commission one.
I do not know Drupal well enough to know whether there's a Drupal module that meets your needs. I'd recommend a careful search, though, especially if you are already somewhat familiar with Drupal. (Yes, Drupal can seem like too much CMS at times.)
However ... if you can't find a Drupal solution or want an alternative to Drupal, MODX Revolution does have an answer: set it up and then install Bob Ray's NewsPublisher add-on. It will put an "edit" button on pages which a user has the right to edit, but not on pages where they don't have edit rights. (And of course users will only be able to edit the title, body content etc - not the entire page.)
Bob Ray has literally written the book on MODX (MODX: The Official Guide). I was able to successfully adapt NewsPublisher to a project last year similar to what you have described, with predefined pages that the user would only need to edit over time. The latest NewsPublisher version, untested by me, is said to be further improved and can now be styled much more easily using CSS. That should allow you to give your users a customised and consistent interface.
As andmag also notes, MODX is a very flexible system for web developers focused on the presentation layer. It has the best templating system going.
I'll recomend you to try MODX. It gives you big flexibility to run your php or html code.

Extremely simple content updating tool for websites - CMS? PHP forms? Suggestions please!

As a side project I tutor grandparents and other computer novices in Computer & Internet 101, from physically using a mouse to dealing with e-mail/searching/etc. Web development isn't really my area of focus - I do have reasonable HTML/CSS/Javascript etc skills, so I can throw together a decent-looking simple, static site - but occasionally I get asked to put together extremely simple websites for these people, that they can update themselves; that is, edit text-based content without giving Grandpa a heart attack by making him come face-to-face with HTML/Javascript.
I've waded through a mile-long list of CMS software - largely culled from the many other similar questions on SO - but they've all got something ruling it out: hosted, restricts the design (can't use w/existing CSS, looks "Word-press-y", etc), not free/FOSS, etc. I wonder if "CMS" is even the right word for what I'm looking for. What I need is a simple text editor for the client: that is, something that will give the client a text box of some variety, let them edit it, and update the content with that info. They can't mess with navigation, add new pages, change anything other than text. If it was really fancy, they could upload a picture.
I was planning to do this just with a couple of password-protected php forms, but thought I'd ask if there's anything already out there that might provide this functionality? Any suggestions on building my own version of this, in PHP or something else?
What I'm really interested in is:
1) the simplicity/customize-ability of the admin interface (or lack of admin interface, if the client could somehow edit directly in the page), and
2) ease of set up for me (not getting paid much if at all for this, don't want to wade through three million plugin options to figure out how to get some unwieldy, high learning-curve framework to do what I want).
Try pulsecms.
Here is another very simple CMS that has JQuery and modernizr , HTML5 Boilerplate and TinyMCE.
I have my wife setup with Windows LiveWriter
http://explore.live.com/windows-live-writer?os=other
This means that she just builds her articles as if she is using a word processor (almost exactly the same) and then just uploads the article to her blog. I use Blogengine.net to host the blog on a Godaddy hosting solution.
Blogengine comes with built in support for LiveWriter and only required that you input the address, username and password in.
I understand this is an old post, but i hope someone find this of interest.
You could give the users the instruction to upload text files to the site, and the have the HTLM/PHP/ASP pages load the context of such .ts files.
Each web page should have a specific named .txt file associated.