Introduction

There was quite a long gap between later versions of 0.6, and this 0.7 release, because contributors were working hard to obtain a high level of XForms 1.1 conformance, leaving little time to prepare releases.

That's not to say that this release only contains XForms 1.1 features; below you'll find information about how to add Google maps to your forms, the new rollup file (which should speed up form loading), how BuildBot is helping contributors to test their work, and much more.

In fact, you'll find that since the last release, contributors have added over 220 bug-fixes, enhancements and new features.

Details

Highlights

Rollup file

From a deployment standpoint, the most important development is the new roll-up file, which includes the entire library in one file. Of course we will improve on this by also compressing the file, but even in its current form, developers should see a big improvement in performance.

The file is currently re-generated by our BuildBot server, every time a change is committed to trunk. (Status of the rollup generation.) The actual rollup file is available from the home-page of the BuildBot server. Until we deploy it properly it should be copied to your server, and referenced as described in UsingTheLibrary.

Submission

XForms 1.1 supports a number of important improvements to submission, and UXF supports pretty much all of them, including the xf:header element.

For details of the new features, see Enhanced Submissions in the XForms 1.1 specification.

Validation improvements

UXF now supports validation against the XForms predefined datatypes.

For details of the new features, see Datatypes and Model Item Properties in the XForms 1.1 specification.

Map controls

UXF makes adding maps to your forms as easy as placing a CSS class value on an xf:output or xf:range.

Examples are in the map controls sample.

New features

The following new features have been added in this release:

• conditional action handlers are now available via @if;
• messages can be displayed using xf:message;
• more XPath functions have been implemented, such as context(), event() and id();
• the xf:repeat start index (@start) is now taken into account;
• the xf:toggle and xf:setindex action handlers have been added;
• the xf:method child of xf:submission is now supported;
• there is SOAP support on POST submissions;
• support for some of the semantics of XForms in HTML has been added;
• @incremental is now working for xf:input, xf:secret, xf:textarea and xf:range;
• SHA-256 support has been added to the hmac() and digest() XPath functions;
• file writing is available, by using the file: scheme and the PUT method in submission;
• file reading is also available, by using the file: scheme and the GET method in submission;
• more control over how a user navigates a form is available via@navindex and @accesskey;
• xf:input's that bind to boolean data will now render as a check-box.

Improvements to the test system

The following improvements have been made to the test system:

• hands-free execution of unit tests;
• W3C Test Suite now uses the Selenium Test Harness;
• there are more Selenium user extensions for XForms-specific testing;
• a Buildbot server has been setup for automated testing and results generation.

Various miscellaneous changes

The following are mainly enhancements to existing features, or bug fixes:

• improvements to form controls, such as xf:range, xf:select and xf:select1 controls;
• improvements to xf:repeat;
• improvements to action handlers, such as xf:insert, xf:delete and xf:load;
• improvements to resource handling in submission, via xf:resource;
• improvements to messaging, via xf:hint and xf:alert;
• improvements to the processing model and the events generated;
• improvements in MIP handling;
• lazy-authoring improvements;
• fixed dynamic relevance on xf:group;
• various style improvements for form controls;
• SVN has been better organized, which means that the directory structure differs from release v0.6.2.

All bug fixes and changes can be found here.