Hello,
on 02/09/2005 01:38 PM [EMAIL PROTECTED] said the following: > I have a form which is too long to be useful displayed on one page. I > have it broken up into 7 sections. All 7 are generated by the same PHP > source file, from data in a database. > > When the user updates a section they can submit it and go to the next > section, or submit it and finish (return to a higher-level page). > There is also a navigation form at the top that lets them jump from any > section to any other, and uses JavaScript to prompt if they try to jump > without having saved changes they made to the page. All of this is > working fine. > > What's bothering me here is that when the user is done editing the data > I use their input to regenerate a style sheet (the form allows them to > customize the appearance of a web page for their customers). That's > expensive -- relatively speaking -- in server load so I'd rather do it > only once, when they're really done. But right now I do it every time > they submit any page -- i.e. whenever any of the seven pages is > submitted, the generation code runs. I don't see any simple way to let > them jump around between pages, yet for me to know when they are truly > finished with all the data. Of course I can give the required > instructions -- "after you are done you have to click submit to save > all the data" but I bet that those won't be read and the users will > jump around, fail to save, and then complain that their changes are > getting lost. > > Any thoughts on the design issues here?
You may want to take a look at this class than handles multipage forms with pages either as wizard like (sequential access) or tabbed like (random access):
http://www.phpclasses.org/multipageforms
There is also this generates a single page using Javascript and DIVs to show you only part of the form at a time and links to switch to other pages:
http://www.phpclasses.org/wizard
--
Regards, Manuel Lemos
PHP Classes - Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP http://www.phpclasses.org/
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