Several months after the release of the Arabic and Spanish versions of Contact Coldform, I am pleased to announce the release of a French translation of the plugin. The new French translation is graciously provided by Tony Tohme, who is also helping with the upcoming Russian translation of the Coldform. Thank you, Tony! :)

To download the French version of Contact Coldform, check out the plugin’s home page, where you will find additional information, future updates, and much more.

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In an effort to organize my pile of offline notes, I will be posting a number of quick, “to-the-point” tutorials on a number of useful topics. In this post, I share an excellent method for auto-clearing and restoring multiple form field inputs using a bit of unobtrusive JavaScript. This method was discovered at xy.wz.cz. There are two steps to this technique, which should take no longer than five minutes to implement.

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Great news! Contact Coldform is now available in Spanish (Spain). Special thanks to Fernando Tellado of Ayuda Wordpress for his superb Spanish translation of the Coldform. Fernando has articulately translated both the administration panel and all of the (X)HTML/text output as well. Contact Coldform is now the perfect solution for Spanish users of WordPress who desire a super-clean, standards-based contact form. Thanks Fernando! :)

For more information, check out Fernando’s post, Plugin Contact Coldform en Español. There you may obtain more information and also download the Spanish (Spain) version of Contact Coldform. You may also download the Spanish version via the Coldform home page. Also, check out Ayuda Wordpress’ post comparing Contact Coldform to Cforms II.

In the current version of my custom contact-form WordPress plugin, Contact Coldform, there is no built-in method of sending emails to multiple addresses. The thought of adding such functionality had not occurred to me until recently, when a Coldform user asked about enabling it. After a bit of investigation, it turns out that integrating multiple-recipient functionality into Contact Coldform is as easy as it is practical. I will definitely be adding this feature to the next release of the Coldform, however, here is the modification procedure for those who just can’t wait.

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Announcing an improved, Arabic version of my latest WordPress plugin, Contact Coldform. The new version features complete UTF-8 compatibility and has been completely translated to the Arabic language. Here is a detailed breakdown of changes made for the Arabic version:

• Completely translated to Arabic
• Encoded in UTF-8 without BOM
• Emails now sent in HTML format
• Added line breaks in HTML format
• Right-to-left text presentation
• Customized layout for Arabic
• Full UTF-8 support

Of course, none of this would have been possible without the generous help of:

• Rasheed, for translating the plugin to Arabic
• Mustafa Saadi, for doing everything else ;)

For more information, check out the original thread at ar-wp.com. There you may obtain more information and also download the Arabic version of Contact Coldform. You may also download the Arabic version via the Coldform home page.

Welcome to the homepage for Contact Coldform, a free contact-form plugin for WordPress. Contact Coldform is designed with a sharp focus on clean code, solid performance, and ease of use. No frills, no gimmicks, only pure contact-form satisfaction. If you are looking for a solid, well-designed, user-friendly, fully customizable contact form, look no further: Coldform is perfect for any WordPress blogger. The comprehensive Options panel makes Coldform easy for beginners to take full control, while the consistent, logical PHP/(X)HTML code makes Coldform ideal for advanced users desiring customized functionality. The best of both worlds: a “clean-slate” contact form that provides everything you want and nothing you don’t! :)

Coldform Features:

• Compatible with WordPress versions 1.5 - 2.8 and beyond.
• Plug-n-play: add Coldform to any WordPress page or post.
• Simple installation — upload, activate, and customize.
• Complete WordPress Administrative Options panel for full control.
• Ultra-clean code output: standards-compliant, valid (X)HTML.
• Customizable anti-spam challenge question to protect against spam.
• Secure form processing and protection against malicious attacks.
• Same-page error messages to help users complete required fields.
• No obtrusive markup or code added to your <head>.
• Includes option to enable users to send carbon copies to themselves.
• Coldform message includes IP, host, agent, and much more.
• Customizable form-field captions, error messages, and success message.
• Customizable drop-in CSS skins for easy styling.
• Customizable CSS attributes.
• Customizable everything!

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I realize that probably everybody already knows this elementary and absolutely dead-simple JavaScript tip, but I was surfing around the other day and encountered a page that made great use of some auto-highlighted textarea content. The idea is simple, include a snippet of JavaScript to enable users to automatically highlight/select upon focus any chunk of text located within a form input or textarea element. I would imagine this trick works with just about any element — buttons, links, you name it. With the following code in place, content within a textarea will be highlighted/selected when the user hovers over or focuses the area. And for input elements, text will be highlighted if present, and, if not, a blinking cursor will appear, ready to serve. Very nice ;)

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After digging through the WordPress source code, I stumbled upon this very useful JavaScript method for auto-focusing form elements upon page load. Here is the JavaScript code (place within the document head):

<script type="text/javascript">
   function formfocus() {
      document.getElementById('element').focus();
   }
   window.onload = formfocus;
</script>

…and corresponding (X)HTML markup (abbreviated for clarity):

<form>
   <input id="element" />
   <input />
   <input />
</form>

In this example, the first form element (identified by id="element") will be automatically focused when the document loads, thus facilitating the process of entering data in the form. This technique would serve users well on login pages (wink, wink;), or anywhere forms are required on a repetitive basis.

Update: [ May 29th, 2007 ] - Here is a similar method of auto-focusing a form element with just a splash of JavaScript. Place the following code into an input element that contains a predefined field value and watch in amazement as the text string is automatically highlighted upon user focus. Here is the JavaScript snippet:

onfocus="this.select();"

..and here is a “live” example:

..and corresponding code:

<form action="http://domain.com/" method="post">
   <div>
      <input onfocus="this.select();" value="Select this input element and this text will be highlighted.." size="55" type="text">
   </div>
</form>

Using a small bit of JavaScript, it is possible to auto-clear and restore form elements when users bring focus to them. Simply copy, paste, and modify the following code example to achieve an effect similar to this:

<form action="http://domain.com/" method="post">
   <p>
      <input value="Click here and this will disappear.." onfocus="if(this.value == 'Click here and this will disappear..') {this.value = '';}" onblur="if (this.value == '') {this.value = 'Click here and this will disappear..';}" type="text" size="77" />
   </p>
</form>

Update [January 2nd, 2007] » Here is another auto-clear JavaScript trick that cleans up the (X)HTML code but does not auto-restore the element. Simply place the first code block into the document head (or external JavaScript file), and then flesh out form elements in the second of block of code and place within the document body:

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--//--><![CDATA[//><!--
   function m(el) {
      if ( el.defaultValue == el.value ) el.value = "";
}
//--><!]]>
</script>

<form method="post" action="<?php echo $PHP_SELF; ?>">
 <p>
  <input type="text" name="target" value="This will disappear upon user focus.." onFocus="m(this)">
  <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit">
 </p>
</form>