Focus Software: Making Forms More Intelligent
Web-based forms are a particularly crude way of soliciting data from users. In HTML, the fields of data that a form solicits, the presentation of that form to the user, and the way that form elements bind to data and send them back to the server are all tightly coupled to each other. It is very difficult to separate the way that a system represents a form from the information that the form contains.
The W3C hopes to change this reality by introducing an XML-based specification called XForms that separates form presentation, form logic, and data binding to form elements. In addition, vendors like Focus Software are building XForms-based solutions that enable companies to build and deploy dynamic electronic forms to a wide range of endpoints and devices such as Web browsers, cell phones, and interactive voice systems.