XML 2008 liveblog: Ubiquity XForms

I will talk about one or more sessions from XML 2008 here.

Mark Birbeck of Web Backplane talking about Ubiquity XForms.

Browsers are slow to adopt new standards. Ajax libraries have attempted to work around this. Lots of experimentation which is both good and bad, but at least has legitimzed extensions to browsers. JavaScript is the assembly language of the web.

Ubiquity XForms is part of a library, which wil also include RDFa and SMIL. Initially based on YUI, but in theory sould be adaptable to other libraries like jQuery.

Declarative: tools for creation and validation. Easier to read. Ajax libraries are approaching the level of being their own language anyway, so might as well take advantage of a standard.

Example: setting the “inner value” of a span: <span value="now()"></span>.

Script can do this easily: onclick="this.innerHTML = Date().toLocaleString();" But crosses the line from semantics to specific behavior. The previous one is exactly how xforms:output works.

Another exapmple: tooltips. Breaks down to onmouseover, onmouseout event handlers, show and hide. A jQuery-like approach can search the document for all tooltip elements and add the needed handlers, avoiding explicit behavioral code. This is the essence of Ubiquity XForms (and in fact XForms itself).

Patterns like these compose under XForms. A button (xf:trigger) or any form control can easily have a tooltip (xf:hint). These are all regular elements, stylable with CSS, accesible via DOM, and so forth. Specific events (like xforms-hint) fire for specific events, and a spreadsheet-like engine can update interdependencies.

Question: Is this client-side? A: Yes, all running within Firefox. The entire presentation is one XForms document.

Demo: a range control with class=”geolocation” that displays as a map w/ Google Maps integration. The Ubiquity XForms library contains many such extensibility points.

Summary: Why? Simple, declarative. Not a programming language. Speeds up development. Validatable. Link: ubiquity.googlecode.com.

Q&A: Rich text? Not yet, but not hard (especially with YUI). Formally XForms compliant? Very nearly 1.1 conforming.

-m