XForms Everywhere

Orbeon is now on Twitter, under the username orbeon. We have started providing regular updates about Orbeon Forms there.

If you don’t know what Twitter is, or if you are thinking “Why would I join another social network?”, think again: Twitter is different. Maybe this blog entry by Mark McGuinness will help you understand what it’s about, although the best way to get it is to give it a try!

We are looking forward to seeing you on Twitter!

We are glad to announce that we will be present at JavaOne 2008 on the OW2 Consortium stand. This year, JavaOne will take place May 6-9.

We have some great Orbeon Forms demos in the works so be sure to stop by!

Yahoo! today announced a new mobile platform called “Mobile Widgets”. The amazing part is that the language used to describe widgets, called Blueprint, is based on XForms:

Much of Blueprint’s philosophy and syntax comes from XForms. We opted for a full declarative language because it was the only way we could effectively run on the wide range of devices out there, some of which have no scripting at all. By using declarative syntax, we can encapsulate and hide the scripting specifics. In some cases, the code could run on the phone, in other case, such as XHTML, we can put the logic on our servers. It’s the perfect way to deal with the various environments and their capabilities.

The Blueprint Philosophy and roadmap highlights the benefits of declarative vs. imperative, “because it was the only way we could effectively run on the wide range of devices out there, some of which have no scripting at all”. For now, only very basic XForms constructs are supported, but “In our second release of the Blueprint language you’ll be able to take full advantage of the power of XForms-style MVC programming”.

Although Orbeon does not particularly focuses on mobile devices, this philosophy is entirely in line with our transformations- and Ajax-based approach to deliver XForms everywhere (in our case to mainstream browsers). It is excellent news that a company like Yahoo! not only recognizes the benefits of the XForms approach, but also decides to leverage the standard instead of reinventing the wheel (like Google did with their Google Mashup Editor, which looks very much like an incompatible clone of XForms).

In short this is extremely positive for the XForms community. We can only hope that Blueprint lives up to its promises.

It is with great pleasure that we are announcing the final release of Orbeon Forms 3.6!

Orbeon Forms is an open source forms solution that handles the complexity of forms typical of the enterprise or government. It is delivered to standard web browsers thanks to XForms and Ajax technology, with no need for client-side software or plugins.

Orbeon Forms allows you to build fully interactive forms with features that include as-you-type validation, optional and repeated sections, always up-to-date error summaries, PDF output, full internationalization, and controls like auto-completion, tabs, dialogs, trees and menus.

Orbeon Forms 3.6 features over 170 improvements since Orbeon Forms 3.5.1, including major improvements in the areas of state handling, XML Schema validation, error handling, deployment within Java applications, and performance. The complete list of changes is available at:

http://www.orbeon.com/ops/doc/home-changes-36

The latest example applications are online at:

http://www.orbeon.com/ops/

You can get Orbeon Forms 3.6 from the download page:

http://www.orbeon.com/forms/download

The Orbeon team hopes you will enjoy this release!

As a reminder, there will be a free XForms Evening this Monday at the XML 2007 conference in Boston, and I will be presenting a talk about XForms and eXist. There are several great speakers scheduled and this is a great opportunity to learn about XForms, so don’t miss it! I hope to see you there!

See also our previous blog entry on the topic for all the details.

We have just posted a release candidate for Orbeon Forms 3.6. Orbeon Forms 3.6 now contains over 170 improvements over Orbeon Forms 3.5.1.

The idea behind the release candidate is to see if anything is obviously broken before we release 3.6 final. It does not mean that Orbeon Forms is bug-free, mind you there are lots of known issues and requests for enhancements in Orbeon Forms.

If you have a chance, please give this build a try and send feedback to the ops-users mailing-list!

We will speak at the XForms evening that will take place alongside the XML 2007 Conference in Boston (3-5 December 2007). The XForms evening will take place on Monday, December 3 and will feature seven 15-minute talks (we want to make sure you won’t get bored). Our talk will be about XForms and eXist:

XForms and the eXist XML database: a perfect couple

XForms speaks XML natively, and so does the open source eXist XML database. In this talk, we show how they form a particularly attractive combination.

In particular, we show how the XForms 1.1 submission module, which supports REST, can be used to perform CRUD operations in eXist. We also look at how XForms can directly submit XML database queries using the powerful XQuery 1.0 language implemented by eXist. The result is an architecture where complete applications can be developed with an XForms processor and the eXist database, while relying entirely on open standards.

We conclude the presentation with live demonstrations of the XForms + eXist combination built using open source software.

We hope to see your there!

The Forms Working Group at W3C has just published XForms 1.0 Third Edition as a Proposed Edited Recommendation. This means that it is a work in progress but that the public is invited to comment. So please go ahead, review the diff-marked version, and send your feedback to www-forms-editor@w3.org!

That was fast: Rob just won a free Professional Web 2.0 Programming book to be the first to run Orbeon Forms from his iPhone, and he has pictures to prove it. First, the DMV-14 form from the Government Forms application:

Even the PDF view is working:

So thanks Rob for sending the pictures, this is really cool. Now of course I am a bit jealous and I wish I had my own iPhone, but that won’t be before I am back in the US in September. Or will I be able to wait for version 2.0? That will be tough.

The XML Prague sessions are now online. We will talk about practical applications of XML pipelines.

Here is the abstract:

Applications of XML pipelines to web applications with XPL

Erik Bruchez, Orbeon

The XProc XML pipeline language is well on its way to be standardized at W3C. But, exactly, what are XML pipelines good for? And how do they work in practice?

In this talk, we attempt to answer these questions by presenting use cases for XML pipelines implemented with XPL, a close cousin of XProc. We show in particular how XML pipelines fill a niche in the constantly evolving web applications ecosystem. Can XML pipelines help deal with multiple web browsers? With REST services? With the plethora of syndication formats such as RSS and Atom? With Ajax? We suggest that the answer is yes in all these cases.

We also show how XML pipelines can play a particularly interesting role when used in conjunction with XForms.

The talk will feature live demonstrations using open source software.

Also check Norm Walsh’s entry on the topic for more details. And if you are attending XML Prague, please be sure to say hi!