# HTML Form Question

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-form-question/136847>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 15, 2002, 8:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-form-question/136847 "2002-11-15T08:31:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Duderdude2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/cdc98d/32.png) [@Duderdude2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duderdude2)\
**Post date:** [November 15, 2002, 8:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-form-question/136847/1 "2002-11-15T08:31:22Z")

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This post is similar to my previous HTML Table Transparency, yet different 😉

Anyways, is there a way to make a form’s background color transparent so the main page’s background can show through? Thanks!

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**Author:** ![Civil\_Defense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Civil\_Defense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Civil_Defense)\
**Post date:** [November 15, 2002, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-form-question/136847/2 "2002-11-15T10:39:13Z")

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I don’t quite understand what you’re asking… are you asking to make form **elements** transparent?

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**Author:** ![Civil\_Defense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Civil\_Defense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Civil_Defense)\
**Post date:** [November 15, 2002, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-form-question/136847/3 "2002-11-15T10:45:16Z")

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erm… to expand on that, if you meant individual elements, try applying a CSS filter to each, something like:

\<input type=“text” value=“This box is fairly transparent, but so is the text inside.” style=“filter:Alpha(opacity=20); color:#000000; border: 2 solid black;”\>

Increase opacity to make it less transparent; decrease to make more transparent. You might have to play with it a little to get a good balance of what’s transparent enough to suit your needs, but also allows the text to show up enough.

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**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\
**Post date:** [November 15, 2002, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-form-question/136847/4 "2002-11-15T11:06:09Z")

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To clarify your question: a form is not a visible element of an HTML page. You can start a \<FORM\> tag anywhere in a page. It simply means that any form elements (INPUT, TEXTAREA, SUBMIT, etc.) in between this and the \</FORM\> tag will be functional rather than ‘dummy’. Also, form elements will not show up in NS 4.x if they’re not within FORM tags. Above answers are very good; you can also change the font size, bgcolor, font, etc. of input boxes using the style attributes of each element. But CHECK IT IN DIFFERNT BROWSERS. They all handle forms very differnently. Often a decent form is a compromise between IE and Nutscrape.

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**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\
**Post date:** [November 15, 2002, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-form-question/136847/5 "2002-11-15T11:07:18Z")

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I really can’t type “different”, can I? Two different iterations of the same word, and neither of them correct.
