Gathering Requirements

1. Gathering Requirements What do users want?

2. Information Gathering Techniques • Surveys • Interviews • Focus Groups

3. Surveys • Paper surveys • Electronic surveys • E-mail • in-text • attachments • Web-based • processing data • Phone Surveys

4. Interviews • Personal • Come prepared • Tape recorder • Open versus Closed questions • Phone • Cold call • Selected users

5. Focus Groups • Room setting • small versus large groups • moderator • synergy • Electronic • Group decision support systems • Cost prohibitive • Platform Issues

6. What to Use? • Ask some questions • Do users have e-mail addresses? • Can you meet with them personally? • Snail mail addresses only? • Does a Website exist? • More than likely use a combination of two or more techniques.

7. Think About • What techniques might you use? • Team will be asked to provide information gathering techniques, plans and tools in reports. • Initial: tools, techniques, any preliminary results • Final: tools, techniques, results • Link to how the Website meets the needs

8. Creating Web Page Forms Paperwork with a New Twist

9. What are Forms? • On the Website • input data • guestbooks • Behind the scenes • files • databases

10. Behind the Scenes • Active Server Pages • Common Gateway Interface Script • CGI • receives data from the Web page and then processes the data to create information • Server-side

11. Other CGI Uses • Hit-Counters • Server-side maps • Message and Web Boards • E-mail lists • Cookies

12. CGI Made With. . . • AppleScript • C/C++ • Perl • TCL (Tool Command Language) • Visual Basic • Java • Depends on the System

13. Where to get them. . . • Ask your ISP what CGIs are available • In UNIX system, in cgi-bin directory • We will use GForm • on homepages.wmich.edu • http://homepages.wmich.edu/documentation/gform/ • FormMail (v 1.9) at Matt's Script Archive is good as well

14. End-User Side • Online Forms • input boxes for text and numbers • radio buttons (option buttons) to select a single option • check boxes to specify an item as present or absent • text areas for expanded input

15. Form Element • Each element is a field in the form and will have a value • Need the <form> first though <form name="reg"> Form Elements and HTML layout tags </form>

16. <form> • Can use most HTML tags in the FORM to specify layouts and presentation of material

17. Input Boxes <input type="option" name="text"> • button • checkbox • hidden • image • password • radio • reset • submit • text • textarea

18. Input Box Size and Length • Some input boxes (like text) allow you to set their size <input size="value"> (in characters) • Can also limit the amount of text entered • <input maxlength=“value”> (in characters) <input size="9" maxlength="9">

19. Value Property • Can set a default with " " • <input value=" "> • <input value="United States"> United States

20. Selection Lists • Used to allow a user to view a list and select one or a multiple number of items • How many pizzas versus choosing the toppings on a pizza • Similar to list tags <ul> and <ol>

21. Selecting One Item <select name="numberofpizzas"> <option>1 <option>2 <option>3 </select>

22. Multiple Items <select multiple name="toppings"> <option value="1">mushrooms <option value="2">olives <option value="3">green peppers <option value="4" selected>anchovies </select> • The VALUE and the SELECTED are optional and can be used with both types of lists

23. Selection List Appearance • <select size="value"> • show more or less of the list • by default shows one item in a drop-down box <select multiple name="toppings" size="3">

24. RADIO <input type="radio" name="text" value="value"> <input type="radio" name="whypizza" value="party"> <input type="radio" name="whypizza" value="lunch"> Why Pizza party lunch

25. CHECKBOXES <input type="checkbox" name="text"> <input type="checkbox" name="hungry" value="yes"> Set a default <input type="checkbox" name="hungry" value="yes" checked>

26. TEXTAREA <textarea rows="value" cols="value" name="text"> default text </textarea> * Close out the TEXTAREA tag

27. TEXTAREA Example <textarea rows="3" name="comments">Enter Comments</textarea> COLS or ROWS optional -- can choose default

28. WRAP Property <textarea rows="value" cols="value" name="text" wrap="option">default text</textarea> OFF = all text in a single line scrolling off the page VIRTUAL = text wraps automatically in Web window. Still sent to CGI in a single line PHYSICAL=text wraps automatically in Web window. Line wrap info sent to CGI as well

29. FORM Buttons • Need to have a means for users to perform actions <input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Send Information"> <input type="reset" name="Reset" value="Clear Information"> <input type="button">

30. PROPERTIES • How the form is handled. • ACTION • METHOD • ENCTYPE

31. Properties (cont.) <form action="url"> Location of CGI script <form method="type"> Get versus Post • Get attaches information to the end of the URL specified in the ACTION area (e.g. server-side maps) • Post is the preferred method -- use it with Gform • Post sends the form information as a separate data stream/file

32. ENCTYPE • Various options like multiple form data, etc. • Default value is text -- what GForm uses

33. MAILTO • Can also have the form data sent to an e-mail address instead of a file or a database <form action="mailto:rea@unix.cc.wmich.edu" method="post">

34. Most Important • Go through the Chapter 6 tutorial • Go through the GForm instructions and tutorial (link on Resource Site) • Try linking your Gform and making it work • Take my example and modify it on your site • Ask Questions