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If you use EverWeb’s Contact Form Advanced widget in your website, you will no doubt be interested in the updates to the widget in EverWeb 3.0.

The highlight of the latest EverWeb update is the debut of the Contact Forms Enhanced Addon giving you customer management features such as storing customer form submission data safely and securely our servers that can be used at a later date. There is also the option for your customers to upload files to you using the contact form, again safely and securely.

The other major feature of the updated Contact Form Advanced widget is SPAM protection in your forms using Google’s reCAPTCHA tool. reCAPTCHA is a free to use tool that helps protect your contact forms against SPAM.

But there is even more that is new in the widget with 12 other feature additions that make will make your contact form even more versatile and professional than ever. In this two part blog feature, we take a deep dive in to these 12 new features…

Classic or Modern Form Style Options

You can now choose to style your from with either a ‘Classic’ or ‘Modern’ style. By default, contact forms adopt the Classic style where the corners of the form’s input fields are rounded. If you use the Modern form style, these corners become right angled edges. You will also notice a different style if your form uses dropdown menus. Here, the Modern style displays menu items without the usual gradient background, and the dropdown selector button on the right of the control inherits the ‘Accent Color’ of your macOS as defined using your Mac’s System Preferences->General option. You may also notice that the font and size of the dropdown is larger when using the Classic style as opposed to the smaller font size used in the Modern style.

New ‘Selection List’ Control Type

A new Selection List field has been added to the Control Types dropdown menu. The Selection List does exactly what its title implies, it lets you create a list from which you can choose one, or more, selections. To use this control type:

1. Add a new control using the Add button in the Form Controls section of the widget, or click on a form control in the list to select one that already exists.
2. Set the Control Type as ‘Selection List’ using the dropdown immediately below the ‘Add’ button.
3. Add the choices you want by using the ‘Add Option’ button below the Options List.
4. Remove any of options you have created by highlighting the option(s) you want to delete then click on the ‘Remove Option’ button. Note that you will not be asked to confirm the deletion when pressing the ‘Remove Option’ button. It is also worth remembering as well that you cannot undo this action if you delete an option by mistake.

When using the form, users can select more than one option. To select a continuous block of options, select the first option in the list that you want. Next, hold down the Shift key and click on the last option that you want. All the options between the first and last will be selected. If you want to select options that are in different places in the list, select the first option in the list then hold down the Command key and click on each of the other options in the list that you want to select.

New Import Text Files Into Form Controls

If you have a large number of list options that you want to add to a control, you no longer need to use the Add Option button to add each new list option one by one. You can now bulk import your options via a preprepared text file instead in to any control that supports the ‘Import Text File’ feature, To import a text file:

1. Open your word processor application and create a new blank document.
2. Enter your options on a single line. Separate each option with a comma.
3. When you are finished, do not include a comma after the last option entry.
4. Next export the file as a plain text file e.g. in Apple’s Pages select File-> Export To-> Plain Text…
5. In EverWeb, add the control type that you want e.g. a selection list, checkbox or radio button.
6. Click on the Import Text File button and choose the plain text file that you exported out from your word processor.
7. The Option List will be populated with the list from the plain text file.

New ‘Placeholder Text’ Field

The new Placeholder Text field lets you add your own default text into either the Email, TextBox, Text Area or URL fields. The Placeholder Text disappears when your visitor starts typing in the field. If you want to change the characteristics of the font of the Placeholder Text, you can do so by changing the fonts for ‘Form Fields’ in the Fonts and Sales section of the widget. However, remember that this will change the look of all the form’s fields.

New ‘Hide Control Label’ Option

Our users asked for more control over their contact form’s control labels, so we added an option so that you can hide the control label if you do not want it displayed on your form. Just toggle the ‘Hide control label’ checkbox field as you want to show or hide the control label.

Updated Fonts and Styles Section

The Fonts and Styles section of the widget has been expanded so that you can now set the style of Control Labels and Form Fields. The Description field has been renamed ‘Control Description’.

In addition to these new features, this part of the widget settings adds a ‘Control Spacing’ field where you can set the vertical spacing between each control. If you want to control spacing on a per control basis, select the control you want and use the ‘Control Padding’ field in the ‘Control Section Options’ section.

The second new option is ‘Max Control Width’. This is an option that you may have noticed in other widgets in EverWeb such as the FlexBox widget. This option allows you to specify the the maximum width that the control can be. This is a useful option when you are working with a responsive page and do not want control options to be too wide on your form when on larger screens.

We have covered a lot of the EverWeb 3.0’s new Contract Form Advanced features in this post, but there are even more! Join us in the next blog where we take a closer look at the Control Section Options, styled buttons and much more!

If you have a comment, question or suggestion, please let us know in the Comments Section below. We would love to hear from you and are here to help !

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