Summary

Forms are key components in taking your sites from being one-way monologues to two-way dialogues. By including forms in your site, you provide the visitor with a way to interact with the site and make choices or send and receive information based on what she wants. You could go as far as saying that, without forms, there would be no search engines, social networking sites, or blogs, and the Web would be little more than a long list of boring archival material.

To get an idea of how prevalent and varied the use of form controls is throughout the Web, think about this: Every time you see a text box, check box, radio button, or any of the other main form elements, you are actually looking at a form. In fact, every time you enter a word into a search engine and click the Search button, you are using a form connected to a massive database!