CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascripthtmlformsclient-side
dunxd
dunxd

Reputation: 958

Browser based client side form filling

My organisation provides grants to small civil society organisations in rural Sierra Leone. We had been using Acrobat forms filled out in Acrobat Reader to collect applications - completed forms are saved to the local hard drive then returned to us by email or on USB stick. The organisations typically have computers running Windows 95 and up, but not internet connections.

Unfortunately, in a recent review by one of our major donors, it was deemed that requiring the forms be filled out in Acrobat Reader was discriminating against potential applicants that didn't have the software. This may have been reflected in the large number of hand filled printed forms returned. We've been told by our major donor we need to use Word for the forms.

My heart sinks when I hear this, and I feel that this is equally discriminatory since Word is not a free product, and who knows what versions of that we have to cater to. Not only that, but getting data out of a Word form is approaching manual entry.

Plain text would be an option, but it would be nice to lay this out as a form.

I am looking for a method for filling in an HTML form in a browser then saving it to the local hard drive in a text based format. Has anyone got any ideas for how to achieve this?

To clarify - the form itself would be distributed on USB drives. We aren't requiring applicants to fill the forms out on Internet connected computers.

I guess if this was easy, there would be no market for a product like InfoPath. And no - there is zero chance any civil society organisation in Sierra Leone has InfoPath installed :-)

Upvotes: 2

Views: 321

Answers (3)

Naftali
Naftali

Reputation: 146310

Try using Google-Docs.

They have a good API for forms.

Or just include a install file for the reader along with the pdf.

Upvotes: 2

Billy Moon
Billy Moon

Reputation: 58531

If you can deliver the forms via usb stick/cd, or a decent internet connection, I would consider using Titanium Desktop which is free, and can do exactly what you want, but even better.

Basically, you write your forms in HTML, and you code with some client side javascript to capture that data. Then all this is wrapped in a browser chrome (like a browser without the toolbars and buttons), and you can write files using javascript again, which sends api messages to the browser chrome to actually write the file to the system.

So the final result, is that without much extra work, you can have a custom made app, with all the benefits of web technology, that can save the data in whatever format you like to the local computer.

Upvotes: 3

David Hedlund
David Hedlund

Reputation: 129792

If the computers don't have internet connection, but you want a browser-based application, then you're going to have to have physical access to the clients, to get the prerequisite HTML files there in the first place, correct?

As long as you're able to do that, why not write a simple client desktop application that just presents a windows form and writes the data to disk in any format you'd like?

Upvotes: 2

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