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XForms: XML Powered Web Forms

XForms: XML Powered Web Forms

List Price: $39.99
Your Price: $27.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Refactoring of HTML into XML
Review: After HTML and the browsers came out in 1993, there was a frenzied buildout of the web. Very quickly, the CGI-bin parsing method was supplanted by more powerful backend approaches like PHP, Java Server Pages and Active Server Pages. (And others.) For all of their competings with each other, which happens to this day, they had one thing in common. Their input and output was HTML. Granted, current HTML has improved since 1993. But not by much. It is as though it remains in a time warp, adrift while entire server side methodologies rose. There were several reasons. Primarily that the problems on the server side, like integrating with a data base, and separating business logic from presentation and from the data queries, were indeed harder problems. It was correct for developers to concentrate on the main issues.

But now, finally, attention has focussed on HTML itself, and indeed on broader interactive issues. Aided by the rise of cell phones and other media where you do not necessarily have a mouse or monitor. And where I/O might be audio with a limited keyboard. People asked, is there a way to write display logic that can easily handle both computers and phones? From this flowed a generalisation of HTML called XForms. The book emphasises XForms' close links with HTML. Deliberately so, to take advantage of the widespread knowledge of HTML. XForms is shown to have an elegant simplicity.

You should know, it IS more complex than HTML. It requires some knowledge of XML namespaces and XPath and CSS. But if you want to develop and easily support products that deploy on computers and phones and maybe other future platforms, then it is well worth it. Imagine XForms as a refactoring of HTML into XML.

By the way, the book talks of various motivations for using XForms, like making your products accessible to the blind. All to the good. But the blunt reality is that all other markets except those mentioned above are an afterthought.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wonderful book to learn XForms
Review: Easy reading and a good explanation of XForms concepts. The book is about 230 pages with a CD. The XForms concepts are very well compressed into these pages, making it easy reading, yet less intimidating. I was able to read most of the book in the car when we went on a trip to Maine.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wonderful book to learn XForms
Review: Easy reading and a good explanation of XForms concepts. The book is about 230 pages with a CD. The XForms concepts are very well compressed into these pages, making it easy reading, yet less intimidating. I was able to read most of the book in the car when we went on a trip to Maine.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Size does not matter
Review: In about 200 pages or so, T. Raman has been able to convey the power of XForms to its readers. XForms leverage the power of using XML in creating web forms. It enables the developers to design simple, yet powerful and feature rich, browser-based interfaces for creating XML documents. It ensures the validity of the XML documents without the use of JavaScript, VBScripts and the entire headache and cumbersome that comes along with scripting languages. The author in a few chapters, using useful examples and just plain old good writing style, depicts the power of XForms, and shows the reader how the development time of creating a feature-rich web site can be dramatically reduced using this new technology. Website developers, technology managers and software architects would be able to realize the benefit of using XForms, and determine by reading this book how XForms can save their website project time and money.

This book is divided into three parts:
· Introduction - Gives the reader the 20-mile high overview of XForms and the various XML standards that it uses such as XML Schema, DOM2, Namespaces, XML Events and XPath.
· Components - Talks about the various components that make up the XForms architecture.
· Emerging Areas - Talks about the connection between XForms and other emerging Web-Services technologies.

If you were familiar with Struts, it would be very easy for you to learn XForms as it follows the same Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern. XForms consists of mainly three parts:
The "data" part of XForms is for any and all nonrepresentational aspects of Web applications. It is used for user data input, and for validation of that input. The metadata is also presented at this layer, which is necessary to communicate the user input with the Web Server.

The "UI" part of XForms defines a vocabulary that consists of abstract controls and aggregation constructs used to create feature-rich UI's. There is an abstraction layer built-in that allows the applications to be deployed on many different devices and platforms

The "submit" part of XForms allows the developer to specify how and what pieces of data need and can be passed to the Web Server. It also acts as the controller of the data in that it specifies the actions to be taken once a response have been received from the server.

The author then goes into detail talking about the various components that make up XForms. The MVC design pattern is broken down even more and the details of each component (properties of XForms, the UI to back-end bindings, XForms events, etc) are further discussed and examples are given to convey each topic better.
Chapter 4 puts the true power of XForms in perspective for the reader. It talks about a multi-stage UI Wizard and it shows thru an extensive example how it can be developed via XForms. The same application would take at least a couple of weeks to develop with Struts and JSP/Servlets. The author in a couple of pages, implements this example and shows the reader how much simpler and faster it is to develop with XForms. The author concludes his remarks on XForms with talking about the XForms processing model. The processing model defines various XForms specific events that can be raised, and talks about how and when these events take place. There are a total of 4 events that occur in XForms: Initialization, Interaction, Notification and Errors events. Each of these events is described in detail in chap 8 and examples are given so the reader can grasp the topic faster.
The last part of this book, the author talks about how XForms fits into the Web Services world, and more generally, with other XML technologies and standards such as SOAP, XHTML 2.0 and CSS.
For a book that would be considered an easy and a quick read, it sure has lots of information packed into it. In one weekend, you can become familiar enough with XForms that you would be comfortable in writing a Web application using it. I recommend this book to any developer involved in Web development.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Size does not matter
Review: In about 200 pages or so, T. Raman has been able to convey the power of XForms to its readers. XForms leverage the power of using XML in creating web forms. It enables the developers to design simple, yet powerful and feature rich, browser-based interfaces for creating XML documents. It ensures the validity of the XML documents without the use of JavaScript, VBScripts and the entire headache and cumbersome that comes along with scripting languages. The author in a few chapters, using useful examples and just plain old good writing style, depicts the power of XForms, and shows the reader how the development time of creating a feature-rich web site can be dramatically reduced using this new technology. Website developers, technology managers and software architects would be able to realize the benefit of using XForms, and determine by reading this book how XForms can save their website project time and money.

This book is divided into three parts:
·Introduction - Gives the reader the 20-mile high overview of XForms and the various XML standards that it uses such as XML Schema, DOM2, Namespaces, XML Events and XPath.
·Components - Talks about the various components that make up the XForms architecture.
·Emerging Areas - Talks about the connection between XForms and other emerging Web-Services technologies.

If you were familiar with Struts, it would be very easy for you to learn XForms as it follows the same Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern. XForms consists of mainly three parts:
The "data" part of XForms is for any and all nonrepresentational aspects of Web applications. It is used for user data input, and for validation of that input. The metadata is also presented at this layer, which is necessary to communicate the user input with the Web Server.

The "UI" part of XForms defines a vocabulary that consists of abstract controls and aggregation constructs used to create feature-rich UI's. There is an abstraction layer built-in that allows the applications to be deployed on many different devices and platforms

The "submit" part of XForms allows the developer to specify how and what pieces of data need and can be passed to the Web Server. It also acts as the controller of the data in that it specifies the actions to be taken once a response have been received from the server.

The author then goes into detail talking about the various components that make up XForms. The MVC design pattern is broken down even more and the details of each component (properties of XForms, the UI to back-end bindings, XForms events, etc) are further discussed and examples are given to convey each topic better.
Chapter 4 puts the true power of XForms in perspective for the reader. It talks about a multi-stage UI Wizard and it shows thru an extensive example how it can be developed via XForms. The same application would take at least a couple of weeks to develop with Struts and JSP/Servlets. The author in a couple of pages, implements this example and shows the reader how much simpler and faster it is to develop with XForms. The author concludes his remarks on XForms with talking about the XForms processing model. The processing model defines various XForms specific events that can be raised, and talks about how and when these events take place. There are a total of 4 events that occur in XForms: Initialization, Interaction, Notification and Errors events. Each of these events is described in detail in chap 8 and examples are given so the reader can grasp the topic faster.
The last part of this book, the author talks about how XForms fits into the Web Services world, and more generally, with other XML technologies and standards such as SOAP, XHTML 2.0 and CSS.
For a book that would be considered an easy and a quick read, it sure has lots of information packed into it. In one weekend, you can become familiar enough with XForms that you would be comfortable in writing a Web application using it. I recommend this book to any developer involved in Web development.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Clear and structured thinking makes complex thing simple
Review: T.V's clear and structured thinking is well captured both in this book and in the technology itself. The simple writing style with the grasp of the subject matter and the interactivity model makes complex thing seem simple and beautiful at the same time.

Xforms is a ubiquitous technology. If more technologies were more like XFROMS, then specifications for accessibility, multimodal content, etc etc would all boil down to <quote>follow the speck, thank you</quote>.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Clear and structured thinking makes complex thing simple
Review: T.V's clear and structured thinking is well captured both in this book and in the technology itself. The simple writing style with the grasp of the subject matter and the interactivity model makes complex thing seem simple and beautiful at the same time.

Xforms is a ubiquitous technology. If more technologies were more like XFROMS, then specifications for accessibility, multimodal content, etc etc would all boil down to follow the speck, thank you.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Needs more about applications and validation
Review: The book is a step up from the W3C documentation. The organization presents a nice ramp from some simple examples all the way to complex wizard style forms interfaces. You will see illustrations of the key points of the standard, but what I didn't see were examples about complex form validations or much in the way of best practices.

It's tempting to base the success of a book about a standard, especially one of the first few books on a standard, on the success of the standard itself. It would be wrong to do so as the book is an individual entity that has it's own unique merits. I haven't judged the book based on the success of the standard. I have judged it on it's translate the standard and to provide perspective. It certainly translates the specification into a readable text, but it fails to provide a large perspective about how to best apply the standard in the context of a complete application.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not good tutorial book
Review: This book highlights the XForms technology.
For my opinion,it's not good tutorial materials for leaning XForms.
It intends to illusrate the functionaliy of XForms rather than teaching you how to use.
Be cautious, some sample codes are incorrect.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not good tutorial book
Review: This book highlights the XForms technology.
For my opinion,it's not good tutorial materials for leaning XForms.
It intends to illusrate the functionaliy of XForms rather than teaching you how to use.
Be cautious, some sample codes are incorrect.


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