Creating the CML/LitCrit Web Form

The Microsoft® Outlook® HTML Form Converter was used to create the form used to open critiques (for reading and writing) from Web pages in the CML application. Rather than authoring the HTML form by hand, the F & M development team used the Form Converter for the following reasons:

• It reuses existing code. The code in the .asp pages of Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA) performs background tasks for the application such as logging it on to CDO.
• It helps keep consistent the Outlook and Web user interface elements of the combined CML/LitCrit application. This happens because the Web form's pages are generated directly from the Outlook form's pages.
• With additional work, it would be possible to use the generated Web form not only from the CML application, but directly through Microsoft Outlook Web Access.

Because of the functionality Outlook Web Access provides, the converted form can run only in conjunction with the .asp files of OWA. Outlook Web Access is installed with Microsoft Exchange Server; for more information on the disk location of OWA's files and of the files generated by the Form Converter, see Location of Generated Files.

Submitting a Critique from Internet Explorer

The following diagram shows the steps taken when a LitCrit critique is submitted from Microsoft Internet Explorer.

The F & M team felt it was important to understand this functionality before being able to test and correct the form that resulted from the form conversion process. To compare these steps with those that occur when a form is submitted from Microsoft Outlook, see Defining the Form's Behavior.