RE: Will Internet Explorer support XForms

Dharmesh,

> Please forgive my ignorance I am relatively new to this forum and
> technology.

They're good questions!
 
> Whilst I agree that FormsPlayer and other software companies can address
issues
> around the browser support, how does this affect a standard look and feel
from
> a marketing perspective?
>
> For example say I create a Insurance form for Brand X, using their logo's
etc.
> Normally we would have strict guidleines about fonts and other look and
feel
> aspects. However from what I understand the forms players decide what a
text
> control, listbox, slider or button looks like? Or can I ensure whichever
player
> our customers use, the form will look exactly the same and thus maintain
brand
> integrity ? If not do we have to test on every forms players to review
look and
> feel?

Most of what you describe falls into the domain of CSS - which means it will
hopefully become increasingly more controllable as CSS evolves. A lot of
good work has gone into CSS 3 for this type of thing. For example, there is
now a pseudo-element called ::value that allows the 'data entry' part of a
control to be styled separately from the rest of the control. This means
that in this situation:

    <xforms:input>
      <xforms:label>Name</xforms:label>
    </xforms:input>

you could use CSS like this:

    xforms|input
    {
      background-color: yellow;
    }
    xforms|input > xforms|label
    {
      background-color: blue;
      width: 100px;
    }
    xforms|input::value
    {
      background-color: white;
      width: 200px;
      border: 1px black solid;
    }

to style the different parts of the control to suit your organisation and
application.

Of course, an input control is quite simple, but it does seem logical that
other common parts of controls will become established as pseudo-elements.
For example, CSS 3 has '::choices' to represent the part of selection
controls that contains the various options to choose from, and selections
could be styled as lists.

Regards,

Mark


Mark Birbeck
x-port.net Ltd.

Received on Monday, 13 October 2003 14:14:11 UTC