XHTML2 and XForms

HTML has become the world's most popular document format, and thanks to HTML Forms is the basis of the e-commerce revolution. With the arrival of XML, a new family of XML-based HTML languages called XHTML has been created, now being widely adopted on devices as diverse as mobile phones, televisions, DVD players, and even refrigerators, as well as on the desktop.

The newest member of this family, currently in preparation, is XHTML2, and is a radical departure from classic HTML. A central part of the redesign is XForms, allowing much more processing on the client side than is currently possible, and giving a much better user experience.

This talk will describe the design requirements of XHTML, and how they have affected the design, and give a demonstration of the use of XForms.

Steven Pemberton is a researcher at CWI in Amsterdam. He is chair of the HTML and XForms working groups designing the next versions of HTML at the World Wide Web Consortium. He is editor-in-chief of ACM/interactions, and a founding member of SIGCHI.NL.