In the process of trying to solve the multipage Google Form problem, I found a bug with the “Confirmation” page. When a custom confirmation page isn’t supplied, the plugin is supposed to use the default Google conformation page. It currently isn’t, instead the page the form is on is rendered again. This is incorrect behavior and I’ve fixed it in my development thread and it will appear in the next release.
Daily Archives: November 29, 2011
Multipage Google Forms – no solution yet
Yesterday I had some time to look at supporting multipage Google Forms. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like it will be possible because of the way multipage forms work. As you work through a multipage form Google adds hidden values to each successive page to facilitate moving forward and back without losing any data. Pretty standard stuff for a “wizard-like” form implementation.
The problem is the way the plugin is implemented, the HTML code for the form is extracted and then re-processed before being added to a page within WordPress. What I’ve implemented works fine for a single page form, actually, in my opinion, it works pretty well. However, detecting the page transitions and obtaining the hidden form fields either isn’t easy or isn’t possible. Right now I am leaning toward the later because the hidden fields are generated based on the prior page (Continue or Back) form submission.
What I have successfully made work is to use the “embedded” version of a Google form within a WordPress page. It works but aesthetically it looks awful. What I am playing with right now is some jQuery to try and manipulate the embedded form to use the styling from the site instead of from Google. We’ll see how it goes ….