What does the “label” tag do and why should I use it?

Posted September 30, 2004

That is what I was asking when the new version of Dreamweaver came out and I started using it this spring. When ever I was inserting a form field of any sort, DW was inserting a tag surrounding my form element. Today I finally learned its usefulness.

If you have a checkbox or a radio button or some small form element like that, it may be hard for some users to click in that specific spot to fill out a form. So by using a tag, you can set up the form so the user can click the text and that will tick the form element for them. Here is the code;

This is some test text.

This should work for most form fields, try it out and see what happens. For text field your cursor will change from a pointer to a typing tool to indicate to the user what should be done in that box.