Re: Ian Hickson (Opera) On W3C's XForms

Robert Bateman wrote:

> On Friday 30 April 2004 10:23 am, Karandikar, Shailesh wrote:
> 
>>I do like XForms. However, as a Devil's advocate, here are some evil
>>comments:
>>
>>Besides combining a well known algorithm from graph theory (for
>>dependency-graph calculations) with XPath, can XForms 1.0 really claim
>>any other innovations?
> 
> 
> It's not really any "innovations" that makes XForms so much superior to HTML + 
> JavaScript.  One item that XForms has going for it that "sold" me on the 
> technology is that XForms (in a pure client implementation) relieves me of 
> much of the validation work at the server.  This is because an xforms plug-in 
> can and does validate input against a schema and will not send invalid data 
> to the server.
> 
> One really big problem I have with many of the technologies involved with the 
> web is their insistance on bringing much of their work onto the server (the 
> thin client approach.)  This is traditionally how HTML content was dealt with 
> - all validation was done at the server.  JavaScript has taken some of that 
> burden back to the client - but JavaScript is not a perfect solution either.
> 
> Thinking more about what XForms has done innovatively - I can think of 
> something:  XForms brings to us the ability to create (relatively) simple XML 
> based input forms.  Given that the content sent to the server is an XML 
> document, XForms makes hooking forms to new and existing WebServices 
> something that has been sorely needed.  
> 
> Prior to XForms, what did we as web designers need to do to feed XML content 
> from a form into a web service?  And *where* did that "interface" between the 
> form and the web service run (usually on the server.)
> 

IE has MSXML which allows client-side XML Schema validation. We use it 
for form (creation and) validation and wsiwyg content editing. It would 
be great if other browsers had support like this and contentEditable was 
put into the spec...

best,
-Rob


> 
> Just my 2 cents worth.
> 
> Bob
>

Received on Friday, 30 April 2004 12:50:50 UTC