XForms Everywhere

Orbeon PresentationServer now features an improved source code viewer.

The viewer uses XForms to display the list of files with the Repeat module. It also uses an XForms submission to call a server-side formatting service which returns the content of the file marked up with HTML, either as a simple text version which preserves all the details of the original source file, or as an optional syntax-highlighted version for XML files.

Thanks to the Ajax-based XForms engine, the viewer allows you to navigate between files or change the viewing mode without the page ever reloading. It also has a “download” function which allows you to directly downlad a source file.

You can access the viewer by selecting the “View Source” tab of each example. It is also possible to link directly to a particular source file.

OPS 3.0.1 is a minor update containing the following changes:

• The new DMV Forms example (see also the standalone version) shows how to implement web forms the right way with XForms, services and OPS. This example is based on a real-life form (a California Department of Motor Vehicles form) and illustrates data capture, validation, calling up services, repeating sections, generating PDF, page navigation, and localization.

• Bug-fixes in the XForms engine, including :

  • Read-only change does not change display of select1 element
  • Trigger as link doesn’t appear read-only and still reacts to clicks
  • DMV Forms example: clicking many times quickly on “Add Vehicle”… adds them

• Fixed XPL performance regression introduced with OPS 3.0.

• Minor documentation and CSS improvements.

Download it now from the Get Started page.

I spent two days last week at ObjectWebCon ‘06 in Paris, where I had the opportunity to make two presentations about XForms (a long one and a short one!) and a product demo on the ObjectWeb booth (called the “ObjectWeb Village”). The ObjectWebCon audience, even though very much into the Java middleware technology in general, responded quite well to the demos of the OPS 3.0 Ajax-based XForms engine: I had many questions and opportunities for discussions both during the presentations’ Q&A sessions and offline in the hallways, which is quite a good sign!

It was nice meeting the regular ObjectWeb crowd as well as new faces, and I had the chance to attend quite a few interesting sessions, including an Analysis of the Ten Most Significant Open Source Licenses by Cliff Schmidt. Unfortunately I missed all the ESB talks, which mainly took place on Thursday.

The conference took place at the CNIT, right next to Paris’s Grande Arche de la Défense, seen here in the morning. It was co-hosted with Solutions Linux, which I did not really have an chance to tour.