I am creating a form designer. It will generate PHP code which will produce an HTML form. Users will fill in fields and the PHP will store user input in a MySql database (and, of course, they can use the designer to generate forms which query the database).

I am using Borland C++ Builder (very similar to Delphi & and you can get the same idea from VB, MSVC, Qt ... any IDE with a RAD GUI designer).

Looking at the W3C page http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_forms.asp it seems that the components I can use for my form and retrieve data from are

  - edit box    / TEdit       / <input type="text"   
  - memo        / TMemo       / <input type="textarea"    
  - check box   / TCheckBox   / <input type="CheckBox"
  - Combo box   / TComboBox   / <select ... <option...
  - Radio group / TRadioGroup / <input type="radio"
  - Group box   / TGroupBox   / <fieldset ... <legend ...
  - Panel       / TPanel      / <fieldset ...

I am unsure whether to allow button / TButton/ input type="button" - other than a single submit button which my form designer program automatically adds to the end of the generated form.

But my real question is - did I miss any? It might be nice to have masked edit which only accepts numbers, or maybe some form of "spin control" (TUpDown, or slider + linked read only TEdit), so that the user can click & hold to increment/decrement an integer value.

And a calendar component would be nice.

Very important: I want to implement it all server-side in PHP, so no client-side JS or Ajax or the likes.

If there anything else that I can add to make my generated forms look more impressive in the browser?