In the past, fully featured E-forms had only been available to users who had installed proprietary viewer/filler software. The difficulties of distributing such software has meant that advanced E-form software has been kept within the domain of specialist users - Lawyers, accountants, financial advisors, etc.

 

The vast majority of internet users have been left using over-simple, slow, unreliable, low-functionality HTML forms (specifications of which have not been updated since 1993).

 

Victoria Forms has now used highly advanced programming methods to enable professional forms run in unmodified browsers  - the first in the industry!

 

For the first time professional forms are now available beyond specialist niches.

 

As with our other form products, blank form templates are first created within our forms design software. Without modification, such forms can now be deployed to the internet, and opened within a standard browser. Users simply by click on a link in a web-page to open the form.

 

Appearance on Screen

 

• Internet forms have the highly detailed graphics, text, fonts, colours, layout, and formatting of  paper forms.
• The on screen form appears 100% consistent across different PC set-ups, different screen resolutions, and browser settings.
• Users have a zoom option to adjust the scale of the image to suit their preferences. Our software overrides browser's own zoom facility, and can therefore produce a perfect quality zoom - the image does not degrade and become "jaggy" as scale changes.

 

Offline use for 100% reliability

Uniquely, our internet forms work fully offline. Once first opened on screen, all form pages are stored in memory. As the user moves from page to page, these are retrieved from the user's PC, not from the server.

The advantages of this radical technology are numerous:

• 100% reliability - Forms work, unhindered by broken internet connections, stalled servers, patchy WiFi signals, or busy ISPs.

• Superfast - There is no delay as the user moves from page to page.

• A single server can deal with hundreds of users filling in forms simultaneously. The server remains idle, right up to the point where the user submits the form. The server costs of hosting large number of users is reduced by up to 90%.

 

Saving to the desktop

For fully offline use, users may save incomplete form data files on their desktop. If there is a problem with the server or their internet connection, the user can save their form and submit it later.

 

 

Interactivity

 

Datatypes - The software ensures data is entered in the appropriate way for the datatype - text, number, percent, currency, date, percent or boolean (checkbox).

 

Software prevents users entering excess text, which would otherwise overflow the field, causing text to be scrolled out of sight. This unique, but essential feature, prevents data being entered which would then fail to appear on the printed version of the form.

 

Two types of drop-lists are available - a fixed list, and a combo box. In the latter, which has not previously been possible with conventional internet forms, the user can make a choice from a list, or enter their own choice.

 

Calculations - Automatic calculations can be used to assist the user. A library of over 100 functions can be used to handle both number and text manipulation.

 

Guiding the user

Shortening the form - The form monitors the user's answers and instantly turns questions on or off depending on the user's responses - the intelligence within the form can take account of answers to a dozen separate questions before deciding whether certain questions are relevant. Whole pages and sections of a form can be hidden from the user unless they are relevant.

 

Turning Questions on or off. The form will instantly turn questions on or off, depending on the previous answers. The user will actually be prevented from entering information that is not relevant to their case.

 

Help Information

Just like a paper form add help information within the form. Sparing use of colours and bold fonts will draw the user's attention.

 

In areas where confusion may arise, guide messages can appear on screen, to assist the user.

 

Field specific help text can appear as a popup message when clicking on a help icon beside the field.

 

Page specific help - A window, containing help information accompanying the form on screen, can be made available to users who want it.

 

Rapid Data Entry

 

Users can move from field to field, page to page with no delay.

 

Users can work their way through the form using the keyboard only. Using the Tab key, they can jump from one relevant question to the next, jumping over questions and pages that are not relevant to their case.

 

The sequence of questions through the form is chosen by the forms designer to be most natural within a real interview session. The result is almost like a script, leading the advisor from one question to the next.

 

Validation

 

The software ensures data is entered in the appropriate way for the datatype - numbers only in number fields, valid dates only in date fields, etc.

 

As they work through the form, error checking is not forced on the user. Users can leave answers blank, and come back to them later. But whenever they wish they can select the "show errors" button. The software then scans through the form, and checking for mistakes. A count of errors on each page is shown, and errors on the page highlighted. Specific error messages for each field will also be shown.

 

Error checks include leaving mandatory fields empty (whether fields are mandatory or not can depend on previous answers), and also more advanced checks, such as inconsistent dates, unusual currency values, incorrectly formatted National Insurance numbers, invalid email addresses, etc.

 

Professional Quality Printing

 

Traditional printing of web-pages that suffers from inconsistency from one computer to the next, and where page text is often bizarrely different to that which the user had seen on screen. Printing of on screen forms, has normally been wholly unreliable.

 

Our new form software overrides the normal browser printing facility. The image on the printed page appears exactly as it appears on screen, while the appearance is 100% consistent from computer to computer. For additional flexibility the size of form page on paper can be adjusted to suit the user's printer (on some printers, the page is reduced in size in order to fit the smaller printing area).

 

The results are exceptionally high quality - similar to that produced by a PDF or Word document. But this is achieved without any downloading of additional software.

 

 

For developers that require end users to print high quality form documents, generated by your application, we supply a standalone product - Weightless Document Server

 

Viewer Styling

 

A growing number of styles are available for you to choose, to suit your corporate banding. We can easily create a custom style for you, to suit your preferences.

 

 

 

Blank form templates (created with our Forms Design software) are opened form an internet or intranet site, and filled out within a normal web-browser.

For Forms Administrators:

Internet forms are hosted on our Enterprise Forms Server, within a user friendly forms library. The Forms Server handles all aspects of using internet forms, from presenting blank forms to users, to receiving and processing completed forms and data.

For Forms Application Developers:

Our internet forms are called by your web-application. Send a request for a particular form to our software, along with any data to pre-populate the form. The user will then be presented with this E-form in their browser, to be filled and submitted. Submitted data is then returned to your application in an open format for processing as you wish.