If you use just
in your

greg — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:32:00 +0000

If you use just <p> in your forms for the inputs, then whatever you have set in your CSS for p will affect the layout of the forms with whatever attributes you have in your CSS for p.
EG a 20px top margin etc.

If you use the default p, such as <p><input type="text"></p>
and it looks fine then for the purpose of you getting it validated it will be fine. If you change the CSS for p it will of course alter your form layout accordingly, which is why I suggested making a specific class for the form inputs.

But to be honest, if you are going to make a specific class for the form inputs then you are getting into styling your forms with layout, colours etc, which is a good idea, but then you would be better off putting the form in a more appropriate layout such as using lists.

This is where you are getting into managing the styles and layouts for your entire site, as the default <p> has CSS for specific areas of your site, other areas you might want a paragraph to have more space below or above, or be indented or whatever. Such as using a specific <p> with CSS styling for form inputs. If later you want to alter the form layout, it's the form paragraphs CSS you change, and the default paragraphs that use <p> around your site will remain unchanged.

Without this approach, I.E. just using <p> everywhere on your site with the same CSS, means you cannot change individual areas or aspects of your site.

So, again, for validation and nothing else just use <p>, or perhaps use <fieldset> if you don't already

Have a read of this if you want to start adding style to your forms, and of course if you get stuck with it just ask
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/prettyaccessibleforms

Greg, what do I do for the

DSSR — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 05:30:56 +0000

Greg, what do I do for the xhtml tag for p .form_inputs

is it or something like that?

Because I do have a class p already.

Thanks mate.

ahhh, I did that but in the

DSSR — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 02:30:52 +0000

ahhh, I did that but in the wrong palce.. I checked some other form I had which validated and I knew it had to do with a container, but where to place it had me, because it doesnt work at teh start of the whole form.

Thanks champ,I really appreciate this ..

Have a good one!

In XHTML strict, is

greg — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 01:49:00 +0000

In XHTML strict, <input> is not a valid child element of <form>.
An input tag has to be wrapped with a block-level element that allows inline elements to be in them, such as <p> or <fieldset>.

Make sure you don't have a default class in your CSS for <p> or <fieldset> or whatever you choose to use.
such as

p{
margin: 20px;
}

etc
As this would alter your form layout/appearance.

You can of course set yourself a specific class or id for forms...

p .form_inputs{
margins, padding, whatever
}

aha! so a form requires a

decibel.places — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 01:10:45 +0000

aha!

so a form requires a container such as a p element - what about div? or span?

Sorry, didn't think about

cmoyer — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:55:45 +0000

Sorry, didn't think about the validation, it is xhtml. to validate it use this code in the form spot in the php.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8"/>
<title>Coupon Code Enter</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="user_guess" action="couponcode.php" method="post"><p>
Enter coupon code here<input type="text" name="user_guess" /><br />
<input type="submit" value="Guess Code" />
</p></form>
</body>
</html>

Hope this clears things up a bit.

nah its okay, Ill leave it,

DSSR — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:00:14 +0000

nah its okay, Ill leave it, better working than broken ..Validate can eat me ...At least my index is validated ..

lol..thanks champ have a great day!

beats me - something is

decibel.places — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 23:46:32 +0000

beats me - something is screwy

try hacking out sections and validating to narrow down the culprit

or you could begin by validating the form code to make sure it validates, then adding pieces until it breaks...

Its the code that cmoyer

DSSR — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 21:47:48 +0000

Its the code that cmoyer posted at first. It seems there is a Form tag open, then its closed.

http://www.only-the-truth.com/couponcode.php

Click the XHTML validation icon, then click show source when you try validate it. It seems to be okay?

maybe
tag was

decibel.places — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 21:35:26 +0000

maybe <form ... > tag was not opened?

If you use just in your