php / JS / DOM question

I know that this is more of a Javascript / DOM question but I cannot for the life of me figure this out: I have this form: <form name="query_form"> <input type="text" name="q"></input> <input type="button" onclick="drawImg('A',document.forms['query_form'].elements['q']);" value="Search"></input> </form> When the user clicks on the button, I want the text that is in input elment 'q' to be sent to the Javascript function drawImg but when I debug it via alerts, it appears to be NULL. Looking at the examples online, I feel like this should work. Does anybody know why this might not be working correctly? -jonathan