HTML forms lack a number of features common in software used in database and workflow applications. These are applications where an on-line document or form is passed from office to office, for example, an invoice or purchase order. W3C is now working on XForms, a complete revision to make forms more portable and easier to work with. XForms fields are tied to a definite data model and less to presentation. That makes it easier for other software to use data in form fields, for instance, to generate reports, and statistics.

If you've read my previous columns, it should be clear that SVG provides what programmers and designers need to create interactive 2D graphics. What makes SVG a little special is the versatility it inherits from XML. XML vocabularies are meant to be extended and intermixed with one another. But despite some noteworthy efforts to create XML-aware browsers, like XSmiles, Amaya, and Mozilla, rock-solid SVG-centric browser applications are not quite ready. But it may be possible to start implementing XForms UI controls in SVG.

Today, XML is most definitely in the mainstream, and proving its mettle by making all kinds of new and unique applications possible (witness the success of Amazon.com's AWS service, or the Google APIs, both based on XML technology). This article provides an introduction to XForms, a recent W3C Recommendation that suggests using XML to manage the display, input and processing of form data on the Web.

Since their inception in 1993, HTML forms have come to form the underpinnings of user interaction on the World Wide Web (WWW). The convenience afforded by the ability to deploy applications at all levels of complexity on the Web, and thereby provide consistent end-user access to information and application services via a universal Web client, created a platform-independent environment for electronic commerce across the Internet.

A form -- whether a sheet of paper or a web page -- represents a structured exchange of data. Web services, as typified by emerging standards like SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI, is an excellent approach to exchanging data in a structured way, although usually the exchange is between machines. Since computers are much better at, well, computing, web services is an important and overdue development in the evolution of the Web. Nevertheless, web services applications exchanging information only between machines isn't very interesting: lots of electronically accessible information originates with ordinary human beings.

Welcome to the XForms home page. XForms is a GUI toolkit based on Xlib for X Window Systems. It features a rich set of objects, such as buttons, scrollbars, and menus etc. integrated into an easy and efficient object/event callback execution model that allows fast and easy construction of X-applications. In addition, the library is extensible and new objects can easily be created and added to the library.

The XForms specification contains many predefined data types

This chapter demonstrates an XForms example

This chapter explains what XForms are and how they differ from HTML forms.

Find out how to submit XForms data to a server-side script or save it to a local client file, and also read about how XForms can integrate with XML Schemas to simplify input validation

Learn to use Word automation from .NET to turn hard-to-process Word documents into customizable XML

This month Microsoft is releasing Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003, putting an end to speculation about what the software giant's approach to XML data collection would be. InfoPath appears on the surface to be similar in functionality to several of the XForms engines I wrote about earlier. Although the official Microsoft FAQ no longer even mentions XForms as of this writing, InfoPath is frequently compared and contrasted with XForms.