Now, just to keep things a little cleaner I am going to start writing only the <FORM> tags. I will leave out the head, body, title and form tag attributes from now on. Needless to say, leave them in your document.

The most common TYPE of form <INPUT> is TEXT.

<FORM>
<INPUT TYPE="text">
</FORM>

Every input needs a NAME.

<FORM>
<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="ADDRESS">
</FORM>

When the user types in his address (for example 1313 Mockingbird Lane), it will become the input's value and be paired with ADDRESS so the end result after processing will be ADDRESS=1313 Mockingbird Lane.

We can if we want, type in a VALUE.

<FORM>
<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="ADDRESS" VALUE="44 Cherry St">
</FORM>

This will automatically pair the value 44 Cherry St with the name ADDRESS, unless the user changes it. Note - be sure to use quotes where I've specified.

We can specify the size of the text input box.

<FORM>
<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="ADDRESS" VALUE="44 Cherry St" SIZE=10>
</FORM>

<FORM>
<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="ADDRESS" VALUE="44 Cherry St" SIZE=20>
</FORM>

<FORM>
<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="ADDRESS" VALUE="44 Cherry St" SIZE=30>
</FORM>

As you can see, the default value is (usually) 20. You probably already know, by the way, that the default value is the value that the browser assumes if you have not told it otherwise.

Note - A text box is not always the same size between browsers. Author a form with one browser, then view it in another browser, and you'll see them rendered a little differently. The only time this becomes a problem is when you try to get into precision form layout. (Actually precision layout of anything on a web page is just begging for problems.)

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