Chapter 9: Editing Form Designer Output

This chapter explains the files output by Form Designer when you create an HTML page, and how you can use Form Designer together with other HTML editing tools. This chapter does not document HTML.

9.1 Overview

Although Form Designer can edit and display any part of an HTML page, you might want to use other tools for creating pages, and only use Form Designer for adding forms, and client-side scripting.

Each page you load into Form Designer is represented by two files:

An .htm file
This is an HTML file containing all the text and layout information for the page. All form layout information is stored inside the page in one of two standard HTML formats - either as tables or as Dynamic HTML (see the chapter Forms and HTML).
An .mff file
This is a file in a format proprietary to Form Designer. This file contains the information needed to declare COBOL data items in a server-side program generated from forms on the page using the Internet Application Wizard. For example, the COBOLPicture property for each HTML control on the page is stored in this file.

You can move forms in either direction between Form Designer and other HTML editors.

9.1.1 Moving HTML Pages into Form Designer

You can open any valid HTML page in Form Designer, by copying it to your Net Express project directory, adding it to the project, and then double-clicking it. If the page doesn't have a matching .mff file, Form Designer creates it. You can then make any changes to the page, or add a new form. If the page already contains forms, you only need to set up the COBOL properties for form controls to prepare the page for use with the Internet Application Wizard.

Note: The data name for a control is taken from the control's HTML Name attribute. Form Designer does not check for Name attributes set to COBOL reserved words when you open a page. If any controls are named with COBOL reserved words, any COBOL application generated from the form with the Internet Application Wizard will have syntax errors. Correct this by renaming the controls.

9.1.2 Moving HTML Pages from Form Designer

Because the .htm files from Form Designer are standard HTML, you can load them directly into any other HTML editor without losing any information. However, if the other editor stores information in its own proprietory files, you must import the form into the other editor to update its proprietory files from the information in the .htm file.

CGI, ISAPI and NSAPI Programs

Client-side Programming