Inside Technique : "Did You Find?" Form
By Justin Hart

The other week while travelling through the labyrinth popularly known as Wal-Mart I had an awakening moment. My shopping list was nearly complete. I had one item left to retrieve, diapers, size 4. Suddenly I found that my journey had taken me twice around the store with no diapers in sight. My only shred of hope was to find someone with a red vest to point the way. After a third trip around I spotted a red-vested fellow who pointed me to the aisle and we were off.

This episode got me thinking about the web and how many times I've experienced the same "I'm lost" feeling. Then I thought further: what if the end-user of my site is having the same experience. How would I know he is lost. The Intranet site I develop is pretty intense by most standards but the only feedback feature I had implemented was a "Send Comments" link. Basically, a mailto function. Frankly it doesn't cut the mustard any more.

I saw an article in Inside-DHTML soon after that about pop-up survey's. After fiddling around with my own survey implementation I realized that this might be the perfect format for a quick feedback application. Thus was born the "Did You Find?" submission form.

Next is a quick reference to the background code and implementation of the form. And hence, a real-business application of a recent article.

© 1997-2000 InsideDHTML.com, LLC. All rights reserved.