Welcome to XForms

The first chapter of this book presents a bird's-eye view of XForms after motivating the need for this new technology. This chapter should be sufficient to give decision makers a taste for the benefits of this exciting new standard. Web authors will find an introductory example that is first authored using the now familiar legacy HTML forms and then recast as an XForms application.

W3C XForms is built on a set of XML standards. The second chapter reviews these various standard building blocks and is meant as a quick tutorial. The material presented here is sufficient to get a taste for these standards and understand the examples in this book. However, it is not meant to be a complete review of these various standards. Readers familiar with XML Schema, XML namespaces, and XPath will find this chapter a useful review. Readers new to these specifications will find the chapter a useful starting point as they get acquainted with the space of XML standards.