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Resetting forms

If you want to provide the user a way to reset all form fields to their default values, you can use an

HTML Reset button:

Similar to a Submit button, a Reset button requires no scripting for the browser to know what to do

when it is clicked. Also similar to the Submit button, a

reset

event fires when the button is clicked:

<form method=”post” action=”javascript:alert(‘Submitted’) “ onreset=”alert(‘I am

resetting’) “>

Of course, you can also use the

onreset

event handler to cancel the form reset.

The form does have a

reset()

method that can reset the form directly from script without using a Reset

button:

Unlike

submit()

, using

reset()

still fires the

reset

event and the

onreset

event handler is still

executed.

Text boxes

Two flavors of text boxes are used in HTML: a single-line version,

, and a

multiline version,

The

element must have its

type

attribute set to

“text”

in order to display a text box. You

then use the

size

attribute to specify how wide the text box should be in terms of visible characters (for

instance, setting

size

“10”

means that only 10 characters are visible at one time). The value attribute

specifies the initial

value

of the text box and the

maxlength

attribute specifies how many characters are

Resetting a form has fallen out of favor among Web developers because an increas-

ing number of users have mistakenly reset the form instead of submitting it (often

the Submit and Reset buttons are next to each other). If a form contains information

in form fields when it is first loaded, a Reset button can be helpful because it resets

the fields to their initial values. For forms that initially load without any information

in form fields, it is recommended to avoid using a Reset button.

You may be wondering why you can’t just use a Submit button and disable it using

onclick

. The answer is that the button actually disables before the form is submit-

ted, which then prevents the form from being submitted at all.

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