FIELDSET - Form Control Group

The FIELDSET element defines a form control group. By grouping related form controls, authors can divide a form into smaller, more manageable parts, improving the usability disaster that can strike when confronting users with too many form controls. The grouping provided by FIELDSET also helps the accessibility of forms to those using aural browsers by allowing these users to more easily orient themselves when filling in a large form.

While FIELDSET is not widely supported by current browsers, it can be used safely by explicitly closing any preceding P element with </P> or by including an empty P prior to the FIELDSET. This causes non-supporting browsers to infer the start of a block-level element even though they ignore the block-level FIELDSET element.

The content of a FIELDSET element must begin with a LEGEND to provide a caption for the group of controls. Following the LEGEND, FIELDSET may contain any inline or block-level element, including another FIELDSET.

An example follows:

<FORM METHOD=post ACTION="/cgi-bin/order.cgi">

  <FIELDSET>
    <LEGEND ACCESSKEY=I>Contact Information</LEGEND>
    <TABLE>
      <TR>
        <TD>
          <LABEL FOR=name ACCESSKEY=N>Name:</LABEL>
        </TD>
        <TD>
          <INPUT TYPE=text NAME=name ID=name>
        </TD>
      </TR>
      <TR>
        <TD>
          <LABEL FOR=email ACCESSKEY=E>E-mail Address:</LABEL>
        </TD>
        <TD>
          <INPUT TYPE=text NAME=email ID=email>
        </TD>
      </TR>
      <TR>
        <TD>
          <LABEL FOR=addr ACCESSKEY=A>Mailing Address:</LABEL>
        </TD>
        <TD>
          <TEXTAREA NAME=address ID=addr ROWS=4 COLS=40></TEXTAREA>
        </TD>
      </TR>
    </TABLE>
  </FIELDSET>

  <FIELDSET>
    <LEGEND ACCESSKEY=O>Ordering Information</LEGEND>
    <P>Please select the product(s) that you wish to order:</P>
    <P>
      <LABEL ACCESSKEY=3>
        <INPUT TYPE=checkbox NAME=products VALUE="HTML 3.2 Reference">
        <A HREF="/reference/wilbur/">HTML 3.2 Reference</A>
      </LABEL>
      <BR>
      <LABEL ACCESSKEY=4>
        <INPUT TYPE=checkbox NAME=products VALUE="HTML 4.0 Reference">
        <A HREF="/reference/html40/">HTML 4.0 Reference</A>
      </LABEL>
      <BR>
      <LABEL ACCESSKEY=S>
        <INPUT TYPE=checkbox NAME=products VALUE="CSS Guide">
        <A HREF="/reference/css/">Cascading Style Sheets Guide</A>
      </LABEL>
    </P>
  </FIELDSET>

  <FIELDSET>
    <LEGEND ACCESSKEY=C>Credit Card Information</LEGEND>
    <P>
      <LABEL ACCESSKEY=V>
        <INPUT TYPE=radio NAME=card VALUE=visa> Visa
      </LABEL>
      <LABEL ACCESSKEY=M>
        <INPUT TYPE=radio NAME=card VALUE=mc> MasterCard
      </LABEL>
      <BR>
      <LABEL ACCESSKEY=u>
        Number: <INPUT TYPE=text NAME=number>
      </LABEL>
      <BR>
      <LABEL ACCESSKEY=E>
        Expiry: <INPUT TYPE=text NAME=expiry>
      </LABEL>
    </P>
  </FIELDSET>

  <P>
    <INPUT TYPE=submit VALUE="Submit order">
    <INPUT TYPE=reset VALUE="Clear order form">
  </P>

</FORM>

More Information

• FIELDSET in W3C HTML 4.0 Recommendation

Copyright © 1998 by Liam Quinn. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).