Intake Forms

Creating a contact form to use on your website is a great way to collect information from potential clients. Rather then simply listing your email address or phone number, the contact form will require the user to enter important information like name and number, and also give the option to ask for extra info like comments or questions. The simplest way to create a form will require the viewer to send the email themselves, while using a .php file to send your form will automatically send you the information as soon as the send button is pressed.

Don't know PHP? Don't worry, there are many websites available that will create your form and the PHP file for free! With a few alterations to the .php file, you can customize your form and add extra intake fields.

For example, I use a site called The Site Wizard to create forms. It will quickly generate a form to use, but has limited intake information. You will need to create an extra .html page to use for your ERRORS and THANK YOU pages after someone hits send. If you need to add extra, customized information, then you can copy and paste the existing form lines, and change the name or question. After you do this though, you must alter the .php file so that the new lines get sent. Basically, read over the PHP and everytime you see a line that refers to one of the intake form boxes, duplicate that line and change the name to match your new box. For example, if there was orginally Name, Address, Email, and Phone, but you added Comments, then you would need to find everywhere in the PHP that Name, Address, Email, and Phone are listed, and create a new line for Comments. If you don't alter the PHP, and only the form, then the new info you have added will not be sent to you in the email.

It might help to read up on PHP before you tackle it, unless you have experience with other programming languages and HTML.

Video on the Web

Video on the web seems to get more and more popular every year (or maybe even every week). Nearly everyone that has ever been on the internet knows about youtube.com, and probably also about the ability to post video onto social networking sites like facebook.com and myspace.com. These are good resources to share videos, but what if you need professional quality, streaming video embedded right onto your website?

This is the question I'm looking to answer.. There are many video players out there that can be embedded into a website, but most of these seem to be expensive and some are difficult to use. Are there any FREE video players for the web that can be embedded on your site AND still look nice/play properly/etc? Youtube works fairly well, but your website is transformed into an advertisement for youtube. There are ways to embed an .mov or .mp4 directly into your webpage, but it can be a little tricky to get the code just right. Simply embedding it onto your site probaby won't work. A couple links to try:

http://www.2-popforums.com/forums/showthread.php?

http://library.creativecow.net/articles/chaffin_abraham/embedding-quicktime-movies.php

You can easily create a link to your movie that should make it play in a new window. Create text or an image to use as your link and then link to your movie file (.mov or .mp4) using the properties window (Dreamweaver). When you preview in your browser, the movie should play in a new window or download to the viewer's desktop. Use .mp4 to get better streaming capabilities.

One example of a free video player that seems to look nice and play pretty well:

http://flowplayer.org/

It also has an option to buy the software for customizable player options.

If anyone knows of a great free player that I should know about, tell me!

Web Design - Adding a Drop Shadow

It recently came to my attention that many websites feature a drop shadow separating the body from the background. The body of the site would be centered on the page and the background would consist of a solid color or a pattern (.jpg image file most likely). The drop shadow creates a nice feeling of depth and is a eye-catching divider between the content of the site and the background. If set up properly, the drop shadow will slide with your website as the browser window is sized larger or smaller. This technique can be accomplished in a couple different ways.

Example One:

Create a new document in Adobe Photoshop sized accordingly with your website content (If working in Dreamweaver, I recommend converting to a centered table). You will create a new layer and draw a rectangle slightly smaller than your entire document. Using Layer Styles, create an Outer Glow in the color of your choice. Save the image into your website images folder as a .jpg with a low resolution (72 should do). In Dreamweaver, select your entire table and locate the background image option in your Properties Window. Add the .jpg you have created and then under Page Properties, change the background color or add a background image file to coordinate with your website content.

Example Two:

This example uses CSS to create the effect. Rather than writing it all out, I'll simply insert the following link that outlines the instructions.

http://www.webdesignerforum.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=307