The W3C started releasing XForms drafts in 2000 and didn't put out a final recommendation until three years later. Analysts at the time blamed that delay on market apathy.
Today apathy is no longer the problem, as developers and vendors survey a sweeping array of technology platforms competing to build the next generation of Web-based applications. The W3C now finds XForms competing with those wide-ranging technologies.
In October, the W3C launched a working group to address Web applications with what it calls compound document formats, which include XForms. The WHAT-WG is also hammering out a draft specification dedicated to extending HTML for use with Web applications.
Worried about Microsoft
Though EdgeIPK and other developers look askance at XForms for its uncertain fit into the Internet application puzzle, browser makers still want a standards-based forms technology to help the Web steer clear of proprietary application platforms. They're particularly concerned about Microsoft's sprawling vision for Windows "Longhorn" applications built in the XML-based XAML markup language using Longhorn's Avalon graphics system. Browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Apple's Safari will be useless to access these Internet-based Windows applications.
Pinning their hopes on Web Forms 2.0, these browser makers and standards advocates worry that full implementations of XForms will require a whole new generation of browsers.
"The XForms group tried to do the right thing, but as a result they dropped backwards compatibility," said Hakon Lie, Opera's chief technology officer, that company's representative on W3C's advisory committee, and a WHAT-WG founder. "And I think that's very unfortunate, because trying to replace a few hundred million browsers is a rather hard thing to do, and I don't think XForms is 10 times better."
The idea of native support for XForms in the Web's most common browser -- Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which accounts for about 90 percent of the market -- is a long shot at best. Microsoft's grander Longhorn ambitions aside, the company supplies the proprietary InfoPath technology for forms in its Office suite, it has not supported the W3C's XForms work, and it hasn't added significant new standards support to its IE browser in years.
That said, some third-party extensions do render XForms in IE.
Mozilla, seen as a rising browser force since the success of its Firefox releases, is backing Web Forms 2.0, though Mozilla contributors from Novell and IBM are hammering out a Mozilla extension that would provide XForms support.
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We currently have a lot of government and financial institutions that do not check for new browsers, relying on code written in 2000 or earlier to determine if a browser is compatable. This discriminate against people who have new, current, and superior browsers. It can also be interpreted legally as conspiring with specific browser suppliers to create an illegal monopoly.
We need the courts to decide if that is acceptable (NO!) or if they will also conspire with illegal monopoly browser manufacturers.