RE: very new to xforms - recommendations

Hi Mary,

> I have the following requirements and thought xforms was a good fit.  We
have
> a tight deadline though and no experience with it.

I'm sure XForms would work for you, but I guess it depends on how tight your
deadline is! Perhaps I can insert here a plug for our fastStart consultancy:

  <http://www.formsplayer.com/content/support/faststart.html>


> I am looking for a processor that can be packaged with a form where there
is no cost.
> A person will go to a website and download a form and hopefully the
process too.
>
> Due to security issues that have not been worked out, the process has to
be downloaded
> to the clients PC - so no server side technology.
>
> Any recommendations on which process to use.  The file has to be saved to
the users PC
> on say the C drive.  This also gave us problems but the code may not have
been all correct.

In terms of the technology itself, formsPlayer may well fit your
requirements. It runs as a plug-in to IE6, and is 100% compliant with XForms
1.0, as well as including some XForms 1.1 features. It also includes a
number of our own enhancements, such as using xf:message to write out system
tray messages or controlling Microsoft Agent. It is free for your users to
install, although they would need to do so from our servers; you can
distribute it yourself on a server or CD but only by purchasing a license.

In terms of saving and loading local files, you can do this using the
"file:" protocol in submissions. (If the form is local, then you can even
use relative paths, which means the same form will work on a server or
locally.) When using "file:", the user will be prompted to authorise each
action, since this could be used to read any file on the hard-drive. To
avoid this prompting, we have added an alternative which is to use the
"cookie:" protocol, which allows you to have data that is accessible on a
per domain, per user basis. Since a form in one domain cannot get at data in
another domain, then this does not require read or write confirmation. You
can find more info on this on the Wiki at:

  <http://www.xforms-wiki.com/bin/view/Main/SaveLocalFiles>

I'm conscious this list is not about plugging particular products, so if you
have questions specifically for us, then please join our Yahoo! Group:

  <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/formsPlayer>

There are over 700 developers registered on this list.

Regards,

Mark

Mark Birbeck
CEO
x-port.net Ltd.

Download our XForms processor
http://www.formsPlayer.com/

Received on Thursday, 27 October 2005 12:29:07 UTC