S
Shailesh Humbad
Hi all,
Here's a question for the experts. I would like to know if anyone has
ever seen or implemented mouse resizable and draggable text-boxes with
transparent backgrounds. I know that a long time ago,
http://www.dansteinman.com/dynduo/ created some fancy cross-browser
dynamic html classes, but I didn't find one where the layers were
resizable.
What I am building is a generic form filler for physicians. They scan
in an 850x1100 pixel image of any of their forms and upload it into
the server. Then, they define areas of the form where special fields
go and save the form. Then, whenever they want to generate a form,
they just pick the patient and the form is auto-populated, and a PDF
is generated. This is all web-based.
My current implementation is too slow and clunky. It is basically a
form with 85 columns and 64 rows of transparent input boxes, each
holding a single character and overlaying the uploaded form image.
The input boxes have no borders and are tied to javascript so when the
user types in the boxes, it appears that they are typing across the
form. One limitation of this is that the some text won't fit exactly
onto the entry lines of the form, because the positions are in a fixed
grid.
In the form definition interface, the user can select and deselect
ranges of (single character) input boxes, whose borders dynamically
highlight to show the range. Once the range is defined, then it can
be associated with a pre-defined form field, such as patient name,
patient date of birth, etc. This way, the system knows exactly where
to auto-fill the form with data from the database.
Obviously, browsers are not designed to have 5440 dynamic input boxes,
and the page takes several minutes to render on a p3-1000. It would
be cleaner to have resizable, draggable, and transparent text boxes
that the user could generate and position precisely over the
background image. So has anyone seen such an implementation?
Thanks,
Shailesh
Here's a question for the experts. I would like to know if anyone has
ever seen or implemented mouse resizable and draggable text-boxes with
transparent backgrounds. I know that a long time ago,
http://www.dansteinman.com/dynduo/ created some fancy cross-browser
dynamic html classes, but I didn't find one where the layers were
resizable.
What I am building is a generic form filler for physicians. They scan
in an 850x1100 pixel image of any of their forms and upload it into
the server. Then, they define areas of the form where special fields
go and save the form. Then, whenever they want to generate a form,
they just pick the patient and the form is auto-populated, and a PDF
is generated. This is all web-based.
My current implementation is too slow and clunky. It is basically a
form with 85 columns and 64 rows of transparent input boxes, each
holding a single character and overlaying the uploaded form image.
The input boxes have no borders and are tied to javascript so when the
user types in the boxes, it appears that they are typing across the
form. One limitation of this is that the some text won't fit exactly
onto the entry lines of the form, because the positions are in a fixed
grid.
In the form definition interface, the user can select and deselect
ranges of (single character) input boxes, whose borders dynamically
highlight to show the range. Once the range is defined, then it can
be associated with a pre-defined form field, such as patient name,
patient date of birth, etc. This way, the system knows exactly where
to auto-fill the form with data from the database.
Obviously, browsers are not designed to have 5440 dynamic input boxes,
and the page takes several minutes to render on a p3-1000. It would
be cleaner to have resizable, draggable, and transparent text boxes
that the user could generate and position precisely over the
background image. So has anyone seen such an implementation?
Thanks,
Shailesh