oneTextarea.scroll

date 12/30/2022
tags All Scroll Programming
title One Textarea

header.scroll
printTitle

mediumColumns 1

oneTextarea.gif
 openGraph
 caption Every single web form on earth can (and will) be represented in a single textarea as plain text with no visible syntax using Particle Syntax. Traditional forms can still be used as a secondary view. In this demo gif we see someone switching between one textarea and a traditional form to fill out an application to YCombinator. As this pattern catches on, the network effects will take over and conducting business on the web will become far faster and more user friendly (web 4.0?).
  https://github.com/breck7/copypaster demo gif
  https://particles.scroll.pub/ Particle Syntax

> 9/5/2024: This is now live in Scroll! You can start using it now!
 https://scroll.pub/tests/form.html You can start using it now

Forget all the "best practices" you've learned about web forms.
 dateline

_Everyone is doing it wrong_.

The true best practice is this: every web form on earth can and will be replaced by a single textarea.

Current form technology will become "classic forms" and can still be used as a fallback.

//
 The current web forms with individual form fields will obviously be kept around for a while longer as secondary input experiences. But in the long run as the tooling for Particles and similar 2D notations evolve, people will stop using those as they'll prefer the faster, simpler single document editing experiences.

***

# How it works

This is the early days, think web forms in 1990's. So it's a little bit of work to implement, until tooling and libraries improve.

But it basically boils down to 3 steps:

1. *Arrange*. Define your forms fields using Parsers. Here's an example
 https://scroll.pub/parserLeetsheet.html Parsers
 https://github.com/breck7/scroll/blob/main/tests/form.scroll example
2. *Accept*. Use the keyword `scrollForm` in your Scroll file to print a textarea with autocomplete and highlighting.
 https://scroll.pub/ Scroll
3. *Analyze*. Receive form submissions via email or save to disk on your server and use Scroll to compile them to TSV or whatever you need.
 https://scroll.pub/ Scroll

***

# A Golden Opportunity
If you're smart, honest and ambitious and you know the web stack boy oh boy is there a golden opportunity here. All my web forms now are one textarea and we are seeing exceptional results. Please go get rich bringing this technology to the masses. When you're rich you don't have to thank me—if I come across your form in the wild and it saves me time that will be thanks enough.

****

footer.scroll