Form Field Sizes Too Small In Browser

Freeway
1

I’m still somewhat new to Freeway and this issue confounded me to no end. For a day or two I thought I was loosing my mind trying to figure this out.

Is this a bug or purposeful in Freeway? I guess since the previous posts were made in 2006 and it’s now 2011 and the current version still only allows a 23 character text field, it is meant to be that way?

I’ve also found that form elements are kind of stuck, you can’t drag them around and put them in different places. The closest you can do is cut and paste. I don’t understand that either.

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2

On Jun 29, 2011, at 6:43 AM, Tim wrote:

I’m still somewhat new to Freeway and this issue confounded me to no
end. For a day or two I thought I was loosing my mind trying to
figure this out.

Is this a bug or purposeful in Freeway? I guess since the previous
posts were made in 2006 and it’s now 2011 and the current version
still only allows a 23 character text field, it is meant to be that
way?

Maybe you have ‘Maximum length’ set to 23 although the default for
this is blank when I add a text field to a form but there should be no
restrictions, not that you should allow a text field to have unlimited
text. So try taking a look at the ‘Maximum length’ setting of the text
field.

I’ve also found that form elements are kind of stuck, you can’t drag
them around and put them in different places. The closest you can
do is cut and paste. I don’t understand that either.

No you can’t drag them around, you can copy and paste or insert from
the Menu.

HTH

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3

On Jun 29, 2011, at 3:12 AM, Mike B wrote:

On Jun 29, 2011, at 6:43 AM, Tim wrote:

I’ve also found that form elements are kind of stuck, you can’t
drag them around and put them in different places. The closest you
can do is cut and paste. I don’t understand that either.

No you can’t drag them around, you can copy and paste or insert from
the Menu.

If you use the HTML tool (and pull down to Text Field) to draw a
form element on the page, then you will end up with a DIV tag
containing an INPUT tag in the final HTML. In Freeway, depending on
your current selection, the first click on a DIV will always select
the DIV itself, while any additional click will take you inside of
that DIV. You may want to try hovering your mouse near the edge of the
INPUT element and watch the cursor arrow closely. When it becomes a
hollow-head arrow with a tail, a single click will select the DIV.
Once that’s done, you should be able to drag the form field anywhere
you like, just like any other drawn element on the page.

On the other hand, if you have used my preferred method of laying out
forms (draw a table, double-click inside a cell, use Insert / Text
Field from the main menu to add a field to the text stream), then you
cannot just drag that field elsewhere on the page, because it’s like a
character of text at that point, not a DIV with positioning attributes.

Finally, if you’re having trouble making your form fields look the
same in the design view as the preview (or Preview in Browser), simply
apply my FreezeForm Action to the page or to the troublesome form
element. What it does is override the browser by using CSS dimensions
for the input.

The underlying issue is this: while you’re working in the design view,
Freeway draws an approximation of how your form field will look in a
browser. Freeway tries to strike a balance between the various browser
rendering styles for form inputs, but the result is that it’s mostly
wrong on many Mac browsers. When you switch over to preview, you’re
seeing a WebKit rendering of the actual HTML, which is mostly accurate
compared with Chrome or Safari. It will not reflect the atrocity that
is any Windows browser, or Firefox, or Opera, or anything else.

Walter

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4

Walter, I’m working on a form now and I don’t have a pre-set workflow for forms yet. May I ask why you prefer using tables for forms?

Thanks,
Kelly

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5

Walter, I’m working on a form now and I don’t have a pre-set workflow for forms yet. May I ask why you prefer using tables for forms?

The main benefit is that tables make it easy to position form elements with minimal fuss but it’s by no means the only way to do it.

Sent from your iPhone

Todd

Portfolio: http://www.xiiro.com
Twitter: @ImXiiro
Skype: toddbrilliant

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6

Not everyone who interacts with your site does so visually. The way that Freeway constructs the page when you draw the form fields directly on the page means that the “label” you attach to that field may be separated from it by acres of HTML, even if it sits directly next to the form field on screen. So a screen reader that is trying to read the form out loud to the partially-sighted visitor to your site will have no idea that this is the First Name field, and will have to rely on the field name itself (maybe first_name – I wonder what that sounds like when a machine reads it out loud).

If you lay out your form in a table, though, there is a guaranteed structure to that part of the page, and a semantic meaning can be deciphered from the alignment of label in the left column and field in the right column. Most screen readers can make real sense of that, which gives their users more information to work from.

Walter

On Dec 15, 2011, at 11:22 PM, Kelly Crossley wrote:

Walter, I’m working on a form now and I don’t have a pre-set workflow for forms yet. May I ask why you prefer using tables for forms?

Thanks,
Kelly

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7

Makes perfect sense. Thank you.

As far as the difference in field length between the Page and Preview modes, what do you advise? My text fields are coming up way short in the preview.

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8

I wrote the FreezeForm Action some years ago to deal with precisely this problem. It’s available at ActionsForge.

Walter

On Dec 15, 2011, at 11:41 PM, Kelly Crossley wrote:

Makes perfect sense. Thank you.

As far as the difference in field length between the Page and Preview modes, what do you advise? My text fields are coming up way short in the preview.

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9

Wow, that is cool, but why doesn’t softpress build that feature into Freeway Pro?

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