Step 16: For question number ten I used the Boolean input type to specify to the participant that they can select only one answer to the question. I used the field variable name ebooksuse to
properly identify the field for later use in building a confirmation form and interactive database.
Step 17: The next question in this survey deals with how much a participant or reader would be willing to pay for an e-book given a specific percentage discount off the hard cover price of a
technical study guide or reference manual. I chose the input type, One of Several Options, which allows the survey taker to choose one of four possible discounts (i.e., 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%). I labeled the input field payforebooks.
Step 18: The next to the last question asks the participant what sort of features or aids would they like to see in e-books in the future. The question provides four possible responses, all of which
can be selected. I choose the prompt Any of Several Options, since it allows the survey taker the choice of selecting one or more options in the prompt list. I label the input field ebookfeatures.
Step 19: The final question in the MCP survey asks the reader which ebook reader software they prefer to use when reading ebooks. Again, we use the One of Several Options input type in
conjunction with the radio button to allow readers to quickly choose which reader software program they prefer. I use the field input label ebookreaderpref.
Note: It is very important at this stage of the forms development process that you move quickly to the following two screens to complete the action of creating the form or survey. If there is a power failure or should your computer lockup or freeze while doing
other work on your computer (i.e., multi-tasking) you will lose all of your work created thus far. Those of you who have a back up power supply like a UPS have a better chance of being casual about this process of forms development in FrontPage, but most of us don't. There
is NO intermittent save function with regard to the FrontPage Form Page Wizard!
Now that we completed the process of configuring the question and answer fields for the survey, I click Next to proceed to the Presentation Options screen (Figure 11) that provides the automatic layout for the form we just finished creating.
Figure 11 Presentation Options is used for layout of the survey form.
Step 20: The Presentation Options dialog box presents you with a number of options for laying out the form, including automatic generation of a table of contents. In this tutorial, we'll skip the latter and basically go with all of the basic default
options for presenting the form. You can always tweak the form afterwards, so unless you would like a table of contents, click Next to move to the final configuration screen shown in Figure 12 below.
Step 21: Using the Output Options dialog box we can specify how we want to store the results of the form (survey participant answers) in either a simple HTML Web page, to a simple ASCII
text file for later retrieval and viewing. Or you can specify a custom CGI script to store the information in a database or yet another software application. Here, I've selected the default to save it to a Web page and renamed the default base name to mcpsurveyresults so I can easily
identify it for later retrieval. I click Finish to complete the entire preliminary process of creating an interactive online form.
Note: You will actually see one more confirmation screen after the Output Options dialog box, an affirmation you have successfully created the form using the Forms Page Wizard. One caveat here. Although you get a confirmation screen that you completed the
process of building the form, it does not necessarily mean that you created the form correctly. You may have to rerun the wizard if you didn't configure the input prompts correctly, for example mixing up the input types, One of Several Options and Any of Serveral Options, which
is easy to do if your not paying close attention. If you are versed in forms development you can manually tweak the form on your own, but for novices it's back to the drawing board.
One last note before we move on. We won't be using the basic forms processing provided in FrontPage for storing results as described in the final step above. Instead we'll create an Access database on the fly, so to speak, to store the results of the IT
Specialist survey on the Web. So let's begin the process of creating a database using the actual FrontPage form properties now embedded in the survey itself.
