Confirmation With XForms
In Web pages using Ajax, when you click on a button or a link, instead of loading another page, that click often starts a background request to the server, and the page then updates based on the response received from the server. If the action is destructive, it might make sense to ask users to confirm their intent. A pop-up is a simple but not very elegant solution. Instead, we can replace the button or link with the confirmation message, as shown in the animation on the right. And you can do this in just a few lines of XForms:
<xforms:switch>
<xforms:case id="delete">
<xforms:trigger appearance="xxforms:link">
<xforms:label>Delete</xforms:label>
<xforms:toggle case="confirm" ev:event="DOMActivate"/>
</xforms:trigger>
</xforms:case>
<xforms:case id="confirm">
Are you sure?
<xforms:trigger appearance="xxforms:link">
<xforms:label>Delete</xforms:label>
<xforms:action ev:event="DOMActivate">
... Perform actual deletion here ...
<xforms:toggle case="delete"/>
</xforms:action>
</xforms:trigger>
<xforms:trigger appearance="xxforms:link">
<xforms:label>Cancel</xforms:label>
<xforms:toggle case="delete" ev:event="DOMActivate"/>
</xforms:trigger>
</xforms:case>
</xforms:switch>
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This snippet of code should have been prominent in the XForms 1.0 spec. The point was to move away from javascripting but XForms never acknowledged that Javascript built in the alert and confirm methods. In order to create usable sites, you need to be able to warn the user about actions that are potentially destructive and or costly and give them the opportunity.
I have one quibble, the use of appearance=”xxforms:link”, I say let’s stick to buttons
ergo: The Unloved HTML and other folktales
Comment by amaah — 4/20/2006 @ 10:04 am
Thanks for the comment. In defense of the XForms 1.0 spec though: I am not sure the purpose of a spec in general is to provide code samples. Blogs, articles and books are probably a better place for that.
Of course you are free to use good old buttons instead of links :-) That’s a good thing about XForms’ “intent-driven” user interface: it allows you to very quickly change appearances while keeping the exact same functionality. BTW xxforms:link is non standard, but there is now a suggested way of rendering triggers as links with the use of the “minimal” appearance.
Comment by ebruchez — 4/20/2006 @ 12:46 pm