XForms—XML-powered Web forms—are set to replace HTML forms as the backbone of electronic commerce. XForms enable the creation and editing of structured XML content within a familiar Web browser environment, which is likely to play a key role in enabling simple browser-based access to Web services. XForms leverage the power of XML in modeling, collecting, and serializing user input. In this book, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) XForms specification editor T. V. Raman explains how programmers can create durable and dependable feature-rich forms accessible from multiple platforms and devices and available in multiple languages and modes.
XForms play a key role in connecting humans to information technologies, deployed as Web services. This book begins by providing an overview of the XForms technology and the set of XML standards on which it is built, including XML Path Language (XPath), Dom2 events, XML events, XML namespaces, and XML Schema. Part II profiles the XForms architecture and its components. An introduction to the available user interface controls leads into a guide to creating complex user interfaces. The following chapters describe XForms model properties, functions, actions, and events. Each chapter’s increasingly complex examples illustrate the concepts discussed. The final part of the book details how XForms will be used to create a new generation of human-centric, multimodal, accessible Web transactions.
A companion CD-ROM provides examples of XForms applications as well as a fully accessible and speech-friendly HTML version of the book that includes hyperlinks to cross-references and the index.
Readers will learn:
- Why XForms can deliver better user interaction at less cost
- How the XForms technology works
- What comprises the XForms architecture
- How to use XForms to connect users to Web services
- How XForms can accommodate spoken and visual interaction
- How to ensure universal accessibility to Web content with XForms
XForms will transform the way companies and consumers handle Web transactions. XForms: XML Powered Web Forms provides Web developers, IT professionals, and Web server administrators with a firm grasp of this standard, how it will shape emerging solutions, and how it will change the nature of their day-to-day work.
About the Author
T. V. Raman is a member of IBM's Almaden Research Center and of the W3C XForms Working Group. He earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University and has filed more than 20 patents during his ten years of work in advanced technology development. His areas of expertise include auditory interfaces, scripting languages, Internet technologies such as Web server applications, and Web standards.
