FormAssembly.com

Well, i should be blogging about infogami being part of reddit, but i haven't figured out what the secret ingredient is yet. I do have rachel.infogami.com though. It seems like Google Pages, except that unlike Google Pages, I could actually use the site. And I haven't actually tried Google Pages yet myself (because it is always down for me).

I do want to talk about FormAssembly.com a little bit. I've tried it for two different things today. First was to develop a form for the flu database for a form to upload large amounts of flu sequences as once. Second, I tried it for CrikeyGuru tonight for a complex question builder. Actually, I was trying to just recreate my current CrikeyGuru form but it quickly became too easy to go whole hog and I couldn't resist. I am quickly getting addicted to FormAssembly's program, but I have some problems with it as well.

FormAssembly basically lets you put together complex HTML web forms. A few days ago I would have said 'who cares', but now i realize how much time it is saving me. And its very nicely done with AJAX which just saves so much time. (AJAX is a way of updating web pages seemingly instantly, instead of having to wait for the browser to reload the page.)

Pros:

1. super easy to make form fields show up only if some option is clicked. I'm trying to think of an entertaining example, but instead I'll just use one from my latest form. So you are asking a question, and you hae to decide if you want a text answer or a multiple choice answer.

You click on a radio button to choose between those two choices, and say you choose Text. A text area pops up that is labeled "Default text." You can enter any starter text you want for the answer. Say you are asking someone to edit some text, like this blog post. I would just paste it in there to get them started.

Say instead I want a multiple choice answer and click that button. Instead of a text area box, I get another text area, but this one says to answer each answer choice on a new line. And there is a pulldown to choose if I want to let people choose one answer or multiple.

Now, I have done most of this by hand. But it is SO SO SO SO much faster with FormAssembly.

1. Make form validation pretty simple and all on the client-side. Less work for me there as well. Wish it could validate URLs though. But they validate all sorts of stuff like email and floats (useful for currency, at least US.)

2. The drag-n-drop is pretty sweet but a little hard at times. You can rearrange parts of your form, but I often forget to click on the correct icon, and click on the name of the form instead. Also, my form has grown so huge that sometimes the thing I want to delete is not on the same page as the trash can icon. And the browser does not scroll the way, say, iTunes does. But the drag and drop is the best way to rearrange the form for sure.

3. The tabs to toggle between Preview and editing the form are fast and convenient.

Complaints:

1. They make it hard to download the form code. They provide a nice little button, but it isn't plug-n-play. I had to add the links for the CSS and Javascript files myself and fiddle around for a while before it would look ok. I'm not sure if they are trying to get me to host my form on their site, but i sure as hell don't want to. I want my form on my web page. Call me old-fashioned.

2. CSS styling is pretty, but doesn't look quite right.

3. Save Button is Annoying. Every time I hit the "Save" button it takes me away from the form editing page to the form administration page or something. And I have to reclick the "edit this form" link again. I just want to basically do the equivalent of Apple-S. This acts more like I hit Save, then Quit. I do like how the text "Save" is written in red when I haven't saved the form. It's like the equivalent of the little circle inside the red circle in TextEdit that doesn't go away until i save the file.

FormAssembly is definitely worth playing with - I haven't tried the other form builder sites. I hear WuFoo is pretty sweet as well, but they don't let you save the HTML yet. And there are even more out there. Also, they are making me realize how much sexier an app becomes when AJAX is used well. It does indeed become more like a desktop application and get rid of some of the annoyingness of web browserland. All in all, i like it.