About the www-forms@w3.org mailing list

Hi everyone,

for all who joined this mailing list later, I believe it
is time for me to introduce myself again and help to
clarify what this mailing list is all about.

My name is Sebastian Schnitzenbaumer and I
co-chair the W3C XForms Initiative together with
Steven Pemberton.

XForms are the next generation of web forms. 
The XForms project has been going on within
the W3C for almost two years and is now
entering its final phase!

Just before Xmas, we released a new version of the
XForms specification: http://www.w3.org/TR/xforms/

We need your help!

The architecture, functionality and design of the 
next generation of web forms is important to 
ALL OF US, not just W3C members.

First of all, be assured that the XForms Working 
Group has always been watching this mailing list 
closely and therefore I would like to thank you all 
for your comments so far.

This mailing list is our most important feedback
channel. The XForms Working Group has
already incorporated various feedback from this
mailing list into the last releases of the specification.

But now is the time to intensify the discussion with
the public (you), to make sure that XForms in the end 
does the right thing and will help to solve *your* 
problems in the future, making this place a better 
web.

The story so far...

The latest version of the XForms specification
is the first complete XForms draft and implements
a portion of the requirements the XForms Working 
Group defined in August 2000: 
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-forms-req

These requirements were defined by the members
of the XForms Working Group who speak on 
behalf of their customers using forms in various
scenarios.

Based on these requirements, the XForms WG 
took several attempts of implementing these
requirments in a markup language called XForms,
as an extension to XHTML and other user interface
markup languages.

The result has now been published and 
shows the current thinking of the Working Group.
Even though a lot of details are still to be defined,
this version of XForms shows in which direction 
we're heading.

Now is the time...

... for us to bring XForms into its final form, with 
your help. Here is how:

- Understanding XForms: First of all, we need
to have a good idea how XForms in its current
form is intended to work. If you haven't read the 
spec, try reading the spec. If you read the spec, 
and it is too complex, please complain! 

This mailing list is not intended purely for those
tech geeks, but also for professional web
designers and html authors, user interface 
designers and even marketing and business 
people.

Therefore, if there is interest, members of the XForms 
WG would be most happy to give a tutorial on XForms 
on this mailing list. By explaining XForms for the first 
time to a wider audience through discussion on a 
mailing list, we will see how easy or hard XForms really 
is to understand (and how well our spec is written).

Ideally we would base this tutorial on...

- Real-life examples: Please show us your web projects 
that use web forms! 

The XForms WG is eager to establish a set of normative 
sample forms and usage scenarios. Tell us in which
scenarios you would hope to use XForms in the 
future. Anything will do, e.g. from a simple feedback
form to a complex survey or database front-end.
Trying to implement those real-life examples with the
current XForms draft will show us what we still have
to work on.

And please, please always feel free to...

- Tell us what you really miss in current HTML web forms 

Don't hesitate to be totally blunt about the pros and cons of
today's HTML and web application development. If you 
think it could all be simpler, easier, faster, speak up now
and tell us why!

Thanks for listening. Please give us some indication whether 
a tutorial on XForms or anything else would help you to 
understand and/or contribute to this project in a better way.

Looking forward to your feedback,

Sebastian Schnitzenbaumer
Co-chair W3C XForms Working Group

Received on Thursday, 4 January 2001 10:59:23 UTC