Re: XForms 1.0: My Opinions

You are right, CSS2 is pretty much totally unable to handle forms UI in 
any sane manner.  I understand the UI group of CSS3 is handling that, 
though.

I am glad to hear there is some experimentation with beyond-the-spec 
stuff in the nascent stages of this technology :)

--John

Dan Dennedy wrote:

> It should be noted that the below comment is based upon using xhtml 
> tables for managed layout. However, I just learned about css property 
> "display" and its values table, table-caption, table-row, table-cell, 
> etc. along with caption-side property. Alas, Mozilla and Opera 6 
> handle them fairly well, but not IE 6 at all. However, it appears 
> Mozilla and Opera do not correctly display "caption-side: left" which 
> rules out using table-caption for a label since labels are often on 
> the left. In order to get various label placements with tables, I 
> currently require row/column spans, which I do not see in CSS2. IMO, 
> currently, neither CSS alone nor authored xhtml tables are completely 
> suitable for xhtml+xforms layout; I still need my layout hint 
> attribute on <group> and my caption-side attribute on form controls. 
> At the very least, these two hints make authoring much easier and 
> expressive without my other developers or customers complaining.
>  
> See the ZVON CSS2 tutorial for examples:
> http://www.zvon.org/xxl/CSS2Tutorial/Examples/example42.html
>
>         DRD> On a related note, label is layout-oriented too.
>         Obviously, XForms supports CSS absolute positioning, but many
>         (most?) prefer a flowed or managed layout. In that case,
>         should labels always go on the left? Many form authors
>         prefer top or bottom. Some authors prefer right-aligned over
>         left-aligned esp. if one or more labels are rather long. Can
>         all of this be specified in CSS using "caption-style" and
>         "text-align"? Not only is the label    
>