- From: Erik Bruchez <erik@bruchez.org>
- Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 21:51:47 +0200
- To: www-forms@w3.org
Kugelman, John wrote: > I myself got lost in all the different XForms processors that are > out there when first introduced to XForms. It was tough to wrap my > head around the client-side vs. server-side debate when all I wanted > to do was see a quick demonstration. One reads about AJAX and maybe > sees a simple drag-and-drop demo and one thinks, "Wow, that's pretty > cool." Where are the comparable XForms sites? Well, whether you call these cool or not is probably up to you, but you find simple but hopefully "cool" examples on the OPS web site: http://www.orbeon.com/ops/ Including: http://www.orbeon.com/ops/goto-example/xforms-translate http://www.orbeon.com/ops/goto-example/flickr-spell http://www.orbeon.com/ops/goto-example/xforms-controls http://www.orbeon.com/ops/goto-example/xforms-repeat http://www.orbeon.com/ops/goto-example/xforms-calculator And we are working on more. Note also the XForms sandbox, which allows you to try your own XForms examples from the comfort of your Firefox or IE browser ;-) http://www.orbeon.com/ops/goto-example/xforms-sandbox (Remember OPS 3.0 is still in beta.) > FormFaces has a number of example pages bundled with it and we've > put those up on our web site > (http://www.formfaces.com/samples.html). Good! This is where implementors should work to make such examples work on their own platforms, agree on extensions if necessary, etc. > The XForms community desperately needs "beginner-friendly" pages and > sites. Amen to that. > Also, ironically, FormFaces uses AJAX to implement XForms. For > example, FormFaces uses XMLHttpRequest to load and submit instance > data. I think this illuminates the AJAX vs. XForms debate in a new > way-XForms could, in a sense, be thought of as a really nice wrapper > around AJAX. This point was a very important part of our talk at XTech 2005 back in May. See the whole article here: http://www.orbeon.com/ops/xtech In particular, notice this quote: "Another interesting perspective on Ajax and XForms is that an Ajax-based XForms implementation can well be considered a standard way of creating Ajax-based applications! While there are today client-side libraries that implement Ajax functionality in the user agent, their scope is usually quite limited: it does not address how updates to the HTML page are performed, for example. With XForms, writing Ajax-based applications implementing a number of Ajax scenarios can be done by sticking to a well-established standard." > AJAX gives you the ability, through extensive JavaScript acrobatics, > to load/submit data on the fly and to dynamically update your page; > it is often claimed that XForms does the same but with simple markup > and no programming needed. I believe our work shows that this claim > is not just a "theoretical" idea, but reality! Welcome to the club! If projects like FormFaces, FormsPlayer, Chiba, Firefox, and our Orbeon PresentationServer (OPS) work together on interoperability, I believe the result will be positive for XForms, and for all those projects as well, as the market for XForms will expand. -Erik
Received on Tuesday, 25 October 2005 19:52:03 UTC