The Orbeon Forms Blog

Form Builder allows you to configure several types of validations associated with form controls: Required: whether the value can be empty or not. Datatype: such as string, decimal, date, or time. Formulas: custom formulas, expressed in XPath. In Orbeon Forms 4.10, we are introducing the additional notion of common constraints.... More

Recently, a customer asked us to implement a feature which looked simple at first: adding a character counter to input fields, text areas, and rich text controls (think a Tweet or an instant message which must fit in an SMS, for example). It looks like this: Input Field with Character... More

Starting with version 4.9, Orbeon Forms isn’t polluting the JavaScript global namespace on the browser by exposing its own version of jQuery. You will benefit from this improvement if you’re embedding a form created with Orbeon Forms into an existing web page, whether you do this using the server-side embedding... More

Today we released Orbeon Forms 4.9! Major features and enhancements Form Builder New control for showing explanatory text. Lots of forms require explanations, often inline with form fields. Until now, you had to use workarounds to do this in Form Builder, such as using a Text Output field with an HTML... More

Orbeon Forms can automatically produce nice PDF files without any extra work (see the documentation). While PDFs are useful for printing and archival, they also have a few smarter features. For example, web links in a PDF file can be made clickable, and this is something that Orbeon Forms leverages:... More

Some forms are complex, and form authors want to provide guidance to the end-users who will be filling out those forms. For every field, in addition to a label, form authors can provide: A hint, shown below the field. Using a hint works well for short pieces of information that fit... More

Today we released Orbeon Forms 4.8.2 PE. This update to Orbeon Forms 4.8 PE contains bug-fixes and is recommended for all Orbeon Forms 4.8 PE users. Specifically, this release addresses the following issues since version 4.8.1: Form Builder XBL template bind attribute prefix/namespace lost when control inserted (#2095) Form Runner... More

The Form Runner wizard view is widely used by Orbeon Forms users: it presents a simple, navigable view of a form’s top-level sections, shown as separate pages. Until recently, the wizard view only supported free navigation. In this mode, you can freely navigate between pages, independently from whether there are... More

Today we released Orbeon Forms 4.8.1 PE. This update to Orbeon Forms 4.8 PE contains bug-fixes and is recommended for all Orbeon Forms 4.8 PE users. Specifically, this release addresses the following issues: Form Builder Incorrect label edited upon insert of XBL with nested labels (#2075) Form Runner Error when... More

Orbeon Forms often needs to perform calls to itself, for example to: call persistence layer implementations, load internationalized resources, navigate between pages, proxy requests for dynamic XForms resources, and request CSS, JavaScript and image assets when producing PDFs. In previous versions, Orbeon Forms performed actual HTTP connections on itself. This... More