↑
Main Page

autosuggest functionality

Summary

In this chapter you explored many ways to enhance Web forms. You learned how to use JavaScript to

reset and submit a form. This included ensuring that the form is submitted only one time. You also

explored different ways to access elements in a form.

You learned a great deal about text boxes, including how to allow or disallow certain characters. Further,

you discovered how to prevent a user from pasting invalid values into a text box and how to validate a

text box value using the

onblur

event handler.

List boxes and combo boxes were introduced and various methods of manipulation were discussed,

including how to add new options, remove existing options, and move options within a single list box

and between two list boxes.

Finally, all this knowledge is used to create an autosuggest text box that presents the user with a number

of suggestions after he has typed in a few characters. In the next few chapters, you’ll learn more about

how to enhance the usability of Web pages using JavaScript.

The autosuggest functionality described in this section is case-sensitive. To make a

case-insensitive version, you should convert all values in the array to lowercase and

then compare these values against the value of the text box (which should also be

converted to all lowercase).

365

Forms and Data Integrity

14_579088 ch11.qxd 3/28/05 11:40 AM Page 365