newbie question - how do you *require* a response?

Please forgive this newbie question but java is new to me and I'm
still trying to find a course in my area.

I'm tweaking an online survey and have gotten it to display what I
want but can't figure out how to *require* the surveyee to pick a
choice.


For each of ten questions, the surveyee is asked:


_____________________________


<select name="proposal1" size=1>
<option>Please Choose one option from the list below</
option>
<option>Approve</option>
<option>No Opinion</option>
<option>Object - The technical approach is not sound</
option>
<option>Object - The proposed project duplicates previous
and publicly reported efforts</option>
<option>Object - the proposal is not needed</option>
<option>Object - Other - you <strong>MUST</strong> give a
detailed response ine 'Comments' box below: </option>
</select>


<TABLE>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td width="500"> Comments:</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td><textarea name=object-one rows=6 cols=80></textarea></td>
</tr>
</table>


______________________________________


Ideally, I'd like to script this so that if the surveyee does NOT
choose one of the select pull-down options (or, more to the point,
allows the default option "Please Choose one option from the list
below" to ride) when s/he hits submit later down the page, s/he gets
an error message instructing the user to return to the form and enter
the appropriate answer.


AND,


if at all possible, if the surveyee choices the final option -
"Object
- Other - you <strong>MUST</strong> give a detailed response ine
'Comments' box below" - the user will go to the same error page
requesting that s/he go back and fill in the comments section for
this
proposal (in cthis case, the 'object-one' box)


I've doen some googling on this but haven't found anything that seems
to be a reasonable starting-off model to use.


Thanks in advance for your help


HOD

Harlett O'Dowd wrote:

Please forgive this newbie question but java is new to me and I'm
still trying to find a course in my area.

I don't recommend taking a course in Java. If you're tweaking an online
survey, then you're more likely to find a course in JavaScript useful.

Harlett O'Dowd wrote:

Please forgive this newbie question but java is new to me and I'm
still trying to find a course in my area.

I'm tweaking an online survey and have gotten it to display what I
want but can't figure out how to *require* the surveyee to pick a
choice.


For each of ten questions, the surveyee is asked:


_____________________________


select name="proposal1" size=1
option>Please Choose one option from the list below</
option
option>Approve</option
option>No Opinion</option
option>Object - The technical approach is not sound</
option
option>Object - The proposed project duplicates previous
and publicly reported efforts</option
option>Object - the proposal is not needed</option
option>Object - Other - you <strong>MUST</strong> give a
detailed response ine 'Comments' box below: </option
/select

Put a value="something or other" into each of the options. Then do an
onclick for the submit button and check the value of each of the
selects. I would make the value of the please choose as "empty", as an
example. Then in the javascript I would check against "empty" and build
and alert string. If at the end of the script there is something in the
alert string, I would alert the user with that string. Otherwise, I
would do a submit().