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So, what exactly are web forms?

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Well, first of all,

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this is not a fixed term,

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it simply is a term I use here

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to describe a collection of HTML elements,

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which we use to display forms,

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input forms to visitors of our website.

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And as I already mentioned in the last course lecture,

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in the introduction of this module,

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you can build all kinds of forms depending

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on which website you're building.

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But in general, most or at least many websites

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are not just about presenting

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or showing content,

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which is what we did up to this point in this course.

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We always just showed text or showed images.

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But, most web pages are not just about that,

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though it is of course super important,

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but they also are about fetching user input.

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And now here, it really depends on what you're building.

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You could have a contact form.

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For example, if you have a portfolio website,

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you could have a contact form where other people

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can contact you to book your services, for example.

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You can have checkout forms,

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for example, on Amazon.com,

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where you enter your address and your credit card details.

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You can have a website where users need to log in,

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and therefore, you might have a login form

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that allows users to sign up and log in.

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You could be building a blog

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where users can comment and share feedback in some way.

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So then you might have a comment or feedback form.

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And of course,

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there are many other kinds

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of forums you could have on your website.

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In the end, it's simply about fetching some user data

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for whatever purpose,

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because you wanna ship some goods

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to them because you're interested

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in their thoughts and feedbacks,

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or because you may be wanna contact them back

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to start a business relation with them.

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That's what forms are about.

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And for building such forms,

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for fetching that user input,

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we've got a broad variety of HTML elements

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and configuration options

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that allow us as a web developer

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to build those forms.

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Now, as you will learn throughout this course section,

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building the form and adding those elements is one thing.

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There also are a couple of related concepts

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which we'll have a closer look at.

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For example, we can validate user input.

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So we can force users to enter certain input values

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and tell them that something is incorrect

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if they entered something else.

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A good example would be an email address,

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which needs to be a valid email address.

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Otherwise, we show an error.

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And last but not least,

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once all the data is entered,

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it also is important that we do something

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with that data once the form is submitted,

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typically when a button is clicked.

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And that is also something we are going

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to discuss throughout this course section.