XML News Desk

(November 21, 2002) - When HTML Forms were introduced to the Web in 1993, they provided a means to gather information and perform transactions. But now the original HTML Form design is showing its limitations. Users today wish to access the Web through cell phones, handheld devices, and assistive technologies such as screen readers. Forms authors need to both minimize scripting and maximize reuse of form components, as well as cleanly separate the purpose, presentation and results of a form. And of course, companies which have migrated to XML want to bring forms along with the rest of the enterprise.

To meet this challenge, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has recently released the XForms 1.0 Candidate Recommendation. By splitting traditional HTML forms into three parts - XForms model, instance data, and the XForms user interface - XForms 1.0 separates presentation from content. This brings new advantages:

• Reuse: XForms modules can be reused independent of the information they collect
• Device Independence: as the User Interface controls are abstract, they can easily be re-presented on different devices with different capabilities
• Accessibility: separation of presentation from content leaves information more readily available for users of assistive technologies.

XForms technologies make it possible to use forms from a PDA, a cell phone, screen reader or conventional desktop machine - without loss of functionality for the end user. XML is at the core of the XForms model, and delivers key advantages to the XForms technology:

• Data received from an XForm is already strongly typed, well-formed, easy to validate, and process. This also speeds up form filling.
• XML Schemas may be reused and updated by XForms
• Using XML 1.0 for the description of results, called "instance data", ensures that the submitted data may be easily internationalized.

XForms, while initially designed to be integrated into XHTML, may be adopted by any suitable markup language. By defining XML-based declarative event handlers that cover common use cases, the majority of XForms documents can be statically analyzed, reducing the need for imperative scripts for event handlers.

Many companies have already announced support for XForms. The XForms Working Group requests feedback from developers working with the new specification. See www.w3.org for more on Xforms.