Chapter15.Beyond HTML Forms: Flash and XForms

Chapter 15. Beyond HTML Forms: Flash and XForms

IN THIS CHAPTER

Using Flash Forms 400

Using XForms 426

You've used HTML forms extensively in the past three chapters, and forms will undoubtedly play an important role in the applications you build. HTML forms are pretty easy to create and work with, but they're also very limited and not overly capable. For example:

• Making fields required, or enforcing data validation, requires the use of client-side scripting (which may not be supported or enabled) or server-side processing (which isn't very user-friendly).

• There is no easy way to extend data types, for example, to display a pop-up calendar to allow simple date selection or to ensure that dates are entered correctly.

• Form presentation tends to be very tied to form contents. Changing form layout (adding or reordering fields, for example) often requires lots of tinkering with presentation code.

• It's very difficult to reuse form layout and presentation, and even more difficult to simply make changes to the presentation of all forms (maybe to change color schemes or label alignment).

The HTML forms specification leaves much to be desired, and Web developers have developed something of a love-hate relationship with forms, appreciating their simplicity but despising the lack of functionality that that simplicity causes.

There are alternatives. XForms is the next generation of HTML forms, and XForms can help solve lots of the problems with HTML forms. In addition, plug-in technologies like Macromedia Flash can dramatically improve the forms you create and use. And as you'll see in this chapter, ColdFusion makes leveraging these technologies simple and painless.