Adobe 38043740 - ColdFusion Standard - Mac Development Manual page 771

DEVELOPING COLDFUSION 9 APPLICATIONS
Requesting and Presenting Information
• They let you develop complex, multipart forms that do not require multiple pages, by using tabbed or accordion-
style dialog boxes.
• They automatically do much of the layout work for you.
Note: Flash form configuration requirements differ from ColdFusion requirements. For example, Flash forms do not
work sometimes with all J2EE servers supported by ColdFusion. For more information, see Installing ColdFusion.
In addition to creating Flash forms, ColdFusion lets you specify Flash format for
tags. Use these tags to embed Flash calendar choosers, trees, and grids in HTML forms, to eliminate the need to use
Java applets. Information about using Flash grids and trees in HTML forms is not discussed here. However, the
information about grids and trees also applies to these elements.
A Flash form example
Flash forms provide many features that help you quickly create easy-to-use, professional-looking, complex forms. The
following image contains a two-tab form that shows many of these features:
This form includes the following features:
• Each tab contains a different section of the overall form, and users can enter data on both tabs before submitting
the form. This technique can eliminate the need for multiple forms on multiple HTML pages.
• The first and last names are required fields, indicated by the red asterisks.
• The Flash form automatically fills the e-mail field with data from the name fields, but the user can override this
information.
• When the user selects the date field, a calendar automatically opens for picking the date.
Flash form CFML differences from HTML forms
Because ColdFusion sends a Flash form to the client in SWF file format, everything inside a Flash form is rendered by
Flash. Rendering the form in Flash has several effects:
• Plain text and HTML tags in the body of a Flash Form have no effect.
• Specify all form content inside CFML tags that support Flash forms.
Last updated 1/20/2012
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cfcalendar cftree cfgrid
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