HTML Reference

Quick Reference

The <form> tag is used to create a form for a user to send information to the site owner. A form can contain textfields, checkboxes, radio-buttons, and more.

<form>
    <label for="first_name">First name:</label>
    <input type="text" id="first_name" name="first_name">

    <label for="last_name">Last name:</label>
    <input type="text" id="last_name" name="last_name">

    <label for="email">Email:</label>
    <input type="email" id="email" name="email">

    <input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

Attributes

The following attributes can be used within the <form> tag.

AttributeValueDescription
accept-charsetcharacter_setSpecifies the character encodings that are to be used for the form submission
actionURLSpecifies where to send the form data when a form is submitted
autocompleteon
off
Specifies whether a form should have autocomplete on or off
enctypeapplication/x-www-form-urlencoded
multipart/form-data
text/plain
Specifies how the form data should be encoded when submitting it to the server (only for method="post")
methodget
post
Specifies the HTTP method to use when sending form data
nametextSpecifies the name of a form
novalidatenovalidateSpecifies that the form should not be validated when submitted
relexternal
help
license
next
nofollow
noopener
noreferrer
opener
prev
search
Specifies the relationship between a linked resource and the current document
target_blank
_self
_parent
_top
Specifies where to display the response that is received after submitting the form

HTML Notes:

  • In our HTML section the term “tag” and “element” are often used interchangeably to refer to both the tag used to create a page element and the element created by the tag (<p> tag = <p> element = paragraph on the page)
  • HTML5 is not case sensitive; so <P> is the same as <p>, <H1> is the same as <h1>
  • Global attributes can be used with all HTML tags and are therefore not mentioned on every tag page
  • To write clean, readable HTML code, it is best to use indentation whereas elements within elements are indented (tabbed or spaces) to create something that looks like a project outline
  • The browser will automatically remove any extra spaces and lines in your HTML code when the page is displayed
  • Double quotes or single quotes can be used around HTML attribute values, but when the attribute value itself contains one form of quote, it will be necessary to use the other around the attribute

We’d like to acknowledge that we learned a great deal of our coding from W3Schools and TutorialsPoint, borrowing heavily from their teaching process and excellent code examples. We highly recommend both sites to deepen your experience, and further your coding journey. We’re just hitting the basics here at 1SMARTchicken.