RE: New To Do Lists example online

XForms Team,

FormFaces utilizes AJAX while minimizing round-trips to zero. A response
to your statement which may or may not meet your needs. I could have
done this many times over the last couple weeks. But I think the XForms
problem is much bigger than just us saying, FormFaces can do it. 

I think we need to re-group and help the end user. There are different
needs which pose different solutions - we aren't saying FormFaces for
all, but it is an option.

I think perhaps part of XForms adoption process problem is implementers
trying to sell why their's is the best - this is hurting the cause. For
example, Chiba using AJAX as the silver bullet, the only, best solution.
While this is great progress for Chiba, there are still pitfalls and
other solutions have benefits. 

There are server-side, plug-ins, stand-alone, and client-side solutions.
For example, ditching plug-in solutions does nothing but hurt the cause,
frankly why are we discussing this here - can we stop this. If someone
wants to do an evaluation across these deployment frameworks and post
the results, great. Bantering back and forth is not good for the XForms
cause.

We all have varying business models. uSoft and other browsers not
implementing XForms gives others to attempt to make money. Some
implementations have opened up, while others have not.

The bottom line is "cost of entry" creates a barrier. If using XForms
was as free and universal as HTML 1.0, it would be everywhere. While
there are open solutions such as FireFox, Chiba and FormFaces, the big
guys such as Oracle, IBM and Novell are going the other way.

How can we fix this?

Very respectfully,
Gary Sikora 

-----Original Message-----
From: www-forms-request@w3.org [mailto:www-forms-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Jasper Bryant-Greene
Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 17:53
To: Erik Bruchez
Cc: www-forms@w3.org
Subject: Re: New To Do Lists example online


Your example seems to make a round-trip to the server through
XMLHTTPRequest for just about everything, including simply selecting an
item in a list. Why is this? The only noticable effect is a change of
list item style, which does not require any work on the server's part.


On Tue, 2005-11-01 at 14:03 +0100, Erik Bruchez wrote:
> All,
> 
> I thought I would point to a new example that we developped. It 
> implements a dynamic user interface for To Do lists done 100% with 
> XForms, on top of the open-source-Ajax-enabled OPS XForms engine. Go 
> try it out here (it works with stock Firefox and IE):
> 
>    http://www.orbeon.com/ops/goto-example/xforms-todo
> 
> This example illustrates many cool XForms features, such as:
> 
>    o Nested xforms:repeat
> 
>    o Use of "relevant" for conditional display of controls
> 
>    o Typing which allows for automatic formatting of dates
> 
>    o Use of xforms:submission with instance="replace", here to call a
>      service able to format an XML document into HTML.
> 
>    o Use of multiple instances
> 
>    o Use of xforms:setfocus and xforms:setindex
> 
> The formatted source code of the page is available here:
> 
>    http://www.orbeon.com/ops/goto-source/xforms-todo/view.xhtml
> 
> Constructive feedback is always appreciated!
> 
> Enjoy,
> 
> -Erik
> 
> Note #1: There is no persistence: it's just a UI demo for now.
> 
> Note #2: We plan for the OPS XForms engine to support Opera and Safari

> in the future. Like with all Ajax-based software, there is some 
> compatibility work to do to get there, but all modern browsers will be

> supported at some point. Contrary to most Ajax-based development 
> however, the developers of OPS are taking care of cross-browser 
> compatibility, while you concentrate on writing your application with 
> XForms.
> 
> Note #3: We are still working on performance (the software is in beta 
> after all).
> 
--
Jasper Bryant-Greene
General Manager
Album Limited

e: jasper@album.co.nz
w: http://www.album.co.nz/
b: http://jbg.name/
p: 0800 4 ALBUM (0800 425 286) or +64 21 232 3303
a: PO Box 579, Christchurch 8015, New Zealand

Received on Thursday, 3 November 2005 04:02:08 UTC