BenWoods.com

I realized this a couple years ago, after the fourth column, but now I'm running out of things that I've even heard of. So instead of ranting and raving about the commercialization of Valentine's Day or the plight of the American economy or the Canadian women's curling team or the combination of the three, I decided to dive deeper into the topic of forms.

If you missed the first one (which about 15 people read, and one guy read the headline), here's a little background on the topic. For those of you ready to move on and learn the differences between certain form materials, keep reading. Or, if you are dead set on researching the Canadian women's curling team, go to Salt Lake City and be a part of the Olympics IMMEDIATELY!

Most of you have filled out forms online.  The trick here, though, is the different ways to capture information. The most basic, of course, is a text field.

When a form is submitted, information is captured based on the entered value of this text field. By naming the text field, when a person or database receives this information, it is stored in the proper place. On top of that, you can assign an initial value to text field like the following:

Another popular way to grab information is with checkboxes and radio buttons. Checkboxes allow multiple choices, while radio buttons allow just one choice.

Again, you can specify initial values. This is great for radio buttons because if you supply an initial value for a radio button, some information will be entered for that field. There are many forms that require certain things filled out, and this is one way to make sure that happens.

Pulldown and list menus are also used frequently to grab data. Like the difference between checkboxes and radio buttons, pulldown menus allow one choice while list menus can allow multiple choices.

Another possibility is the use of a jump menu, which is similar to a pulldown menu. But when you make a selection, you are automatically taken to another page or more information appears to make an additional selection. For instance, on cars.com, when you select a make to view, the list of models that corresponds to that make appears.

At least now you should have a better understanding of why Web sites ask for information in different formats. And because Valentine's Day is over, and the Olympics soon will be, there's just one thing for me to worry about: a topic for my next column!