XForms For The Masses

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The FormFaces project team announced their open source ECMAScript XForms solution today. The engine processes XForms entirely on the client side and runs on any ECMAScript and DOM Level 2 powered Webbrowser (Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Opera, Konquerer, Safari and others). All the author has to do is add one JavaScript include to her XHTML/XForms document: <script type="javascript" src="xforms.js"></script>.

Given that the engine lives up to its promise, this release may mark the end of the UGO Project as we know it today. The goal would have been achieved and developers can finally start writing sophisticated forms applications without the hassle of messing with error-prone, homegrown JavaScript to overcome the limits of current HTML forms implementations.

FormFaces is currently in alpha and scheduled to be released in April.

4 thoughts on “XForms For The Masses”

  1. It’s interesting that you feel UGO has to “die” now… I thought one of the most important features for UGO was the fact that it would render (quoting from the project page) “ranging from recent or legacy browsers’ Javascript implementations, to Flash Player 6 and 7, to other ECMAScript-based implementations”… rendering on the Flash player, imho, was one of the most important features of DENG… the player’s penetration numbers have always been very interesting (and important) and the possibilities of proper/lightly coded forms and the capabilities of the player should be a dream for anyone. I certainly feel UGO has a place among all the forms offerings cropping up :)

    eokyere

  2. Emmanuel,
    maybe my words were misleading. i didn’t say UGO “has to die”. I said FormFaces “may mark the end of the UGO Project as we know it today”. Like you, i think the concept has a lot of potential. However, it seems that some people put together a working, cross browser ECMAScript XForms renderer there, which would be great. The engine has an open source license, so instead of cooking our own (which is a lot of work), we can consider plugging the FormFaces engine into UGO, or vice versa spice up FormFaces with UGO elements.
    By the way: as soon as the Flash Player 8 is released, the Flash part of the DENG engine is going to evolve into a version 2.0. Lately, i was a bit unsure what direction the Flash part of DENG should be heading to (fix/enhance DENG1 vs. rewrite on top of a DOM3 implementation vs. wait for the next plugin version), but now i have a pretty clear idea of what DENG2 will be.
    cheers,
    claus.

  3. Aaaa… rather the opposite; DENG/UGO see a lot more accelerated dev growth because of the successes here… great stuff :) … so, by “wait for the next plugin version”, do you mean the capabilities of the new player will determine what new features will make it into DENG 2? meaning, the current player poses too many problems? or are you positing that MM might be working on a Forms package themselves (and no, mx.screens.Form isn’t even close to what i’m talking about)?

    eokyere

  4. so, by “wait for the next plugin version”, do you mean the capabilities of the new player will determine what new features will make it into DENG 2? meaning, the current player poses too many problems?

    Yes, that is correct. The main problem is poor performance. I have hopes that in the new player this won’t be a problem anymore.

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