Tuesday, Apr 8, 2014

Orbeon Forms 4.5

Today we released Orbeon Forms 4.5!

Major features

This release is rich in new features and enhancements:
  • IE11 support. Both Form Builder and deployed forms now work with with IE11.
  • Versioning of form definitions. Publishing a form definition doesn't overwrite the previously published form definition, but creates a new version of it. Orbeon Forms associates the version of the form definition used for creating and editing data. This is supported with relational databases (Oracle, MySQL, and DB2 at this time). (blog post)
  • Improved fields, checkboxes and radio buttons in preview and PDF. Automatic PDF output now shows all radio buttons and checkboxes, nicely highlights fields, supports optional page breaks before sections, and shows the form's title in the page's header and footer. (blog post)
  • Inserting and reordering of grid rows. Repeated grids now have the ability to reorder grid rows and to specify exactly where to insert a new row. (blog post)
  • Repeated sections. Form Builder and Form Runner now support repeated section content. This is very similar to repeating a group of grid rows, except that the entire content of a section can be repeated, including nested grids and subsections. (blog post)
  • Improved help messages appearance and positioning. Help messages have a fresher, more modern look, and are now more lightweight and better positioned. (blog post)
  • Hints for checkboxes and radio buttons. You can now associate hint messages with specific radio button or checkboxes. They appear as tooltips upon hover. (blog post)
  • Form definitions and form data duplication. The summary pages for both Form Builder and your own forms now can have a Duplicate button which allows you to duplicate form definitions (in Form Builder) and form data, including attachments. (blog post)
  • Improved dropdown menus. Dropdown menus are now a bit smarter! (blog post)
  • Improved Form Builder Choices editor. The Form Builder Choices editor allows you to reorder items and to directly localize labels and hints. (blog post)
  • Improved Form Builder variable resolution. We have fixed a long-standing issue which prevented the use of variables in repeated grids. (doc)
  • Detecting login pages in Ajax requests. Administrators can now tell Orbeon Forms which pages are login pages, to help with error recovery. (blog post)
Internationalization:
  • This version features full Spanish localization, courtesy of Bruno Buzzi of AGESIC.
  • This version also features Swedish localization for Form Runner.
See Localizing Orbeon Forms for more details about supported languages.
Other bug-fixes and features

Including the major features and enhancements above, we closed over 110 issues since Orbeon Forms 4.4. We should mention these notable bug-fixes and features:
  • XForms 2.0 bind() function (#1423)
  • Service request or response cannot target control in subsection (#1465)
  • Support repeats in actions (#1105)
  • PDF: Option to output a page break before a section (#1556)
  • FB: UI to edit control, grid and section classes (#1555)
  • PDF: Ability to set form title in header and/or footer (#1558)
  • Processes: reusable confirmation dialog (#1570)
  • XML Schema xs:import doesn't support relative paths (#1340)
Current browser support
  • Form Builder (creating forms):
    • Chrome (latest versions, both in the stable and dev channels)
    • Firefox (latest released version and current Firefox ESR)
    • IE10 and IE11
    • Additional support for Form Runner (accessing form):
      • IE7 (deprecated), IE8, and IE9
      • Safari Mobile on iOS 6 and iOS 7
      • Chrome for Android (stable channel)
    Compatibility notes
    • Date picker. The Date Picker control has been removed from Form Builder. It was similar to the normal Date control, except the date was shown as text in the page, not in a text field. The Date Picker didn't have much of a benefit over the regular Date control, but had a big drawback: it wasn't usable on mobile devices, which expect a text field to enable the native date picker. Note that while the control isn't available in the Form Builder sidebar anymore, the underlying implementation is still there, so your existing forms that use a Date Picker can still be edited in Form Builder, and will still function properly. (#1364)
    • Datatable. The fr:datatable component, deprecated in 4.0, has been completely removed.
    • Deployment. Integrated deployment, consisting in combining your Java/JSP applications with Orbeon Forms within the same WAR, is now deprecated. We recommend using separate deployment instead.
    • Oracle flat view. The truncation of section/control column names has changed. If the section or control name is 14 characters or less, it is kept as is, and the other part is truncated if needed. A numerical suffix is used instead for those columns which would introduce duplicates. (doc)
    • Tamino support. Unmaintained support for the Tamino XML database has been removed.
    You can download the latest version of Orbeon Forms from the downloads page.
      Don't forget to grab a trial license for the PE version.

      Please send feedback:
      We hope you enjoy this release!
      Posted by Alessandro Vernet at 1:21 am UTC