XForms: Improving the Web Forms Experience
Steven Pemberton
W3C and CWI, Amsterdam

HTML Forms were the basis of the e-commerce revolution. Now after a decade of use, they are being replaced by XForms, the new technology for doing forms on the Web.

XForms offers large benefits over traditional HTML Forms, such as an improved user experience by allowing more to be checked in the browser, easier authoring, device independence, and improved accessibility.

XForms was the most implemented W3C technology on its day of release ever when it was announced in October last year; it is supported by many major computer companies, such as IBM, Novell, Oracle and Sun, and several industries have announced that they are moving to XForms.

This tutorial introduces XForms and gives you the opportunity to design forms hands-on. The tutorial is based on the XForms specification and the presenter is an author of the specification and chair of the group that designed XForms, as well as a well-known author and presenter in the user interfaces world.

Features

All of XForms will be described with the exception of the details of
the use of Schemas, and some technicalities of event handling. Based
on their understanding of HTML Forms, attendees will develop a number
of forms hands-on, gradually building up understanding of the
features.

Audience

The tutorial is for people who want to learn about new developments in
Web technology, and how to apply them to increase the usability of
websites. You should have a working knowledge of HTML Forms.

While not required, if you bring a laptop with you you will be able to try your forms out during the tutorial. Windows users should install the FormsPlayer plugin for IE 6 from www.formsplayer.com. Macintosh and Linux users should install XSmiles from www.xsmiles.org, or the Novell Technical Preview from developer.novell.com/xforms.

The Instructor

Steven Pemberton is a researcher at the CWI, Amsterdam, the Dutch
national research institute for mathematics and computer science. He
has been involved with the Web from the beginning, organising two
workshops at the first WWW conference in 1994, and chairing the first
Style Sheets Workshop in 1995. He is chair of the HTML and Forms
Working Groups, and co-author of HTML, CSS, XHTML and XForms. He has
given tutorials on Web technologies many times before. He is
editor-in-chief of ACM/interactions.