Question

I thought that an html form has no effect on the layout of a page, and that it is just a way to group fields to send their values to the server in a single request.

However, I notices that when I remove the form tag, the layout changes.

Where can I find an explanation of visual effects of the <form> tag?

Answer 1

<form> is a block-level element, so at the very least, it will appear on its own line. It probably also has some basic margin and padding attributes as a default. I would recommend using Firebug to inspect the form element and see what it’s layout properties are.

You can easily adjust the appearance of <form> through either an external css file, css in your document HEAD, or inline styles on the form, like this:

<form style="margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #cc5500;">
...
</form>