NOTE: This release was formerly referred to as Orbeon Forms 4.11. You can read more on the new versioning scheme further below.
Major features and enhancements
Improved documentation site
While this is not directly associated with this release, we should mention that our documentation site has now migrated to a new location, simply doc.orbeon.com. Please let us know if anything is missing or incorrect!
New handwritten signature form control
This brand new form control allows you to include a handwritten signature with a mouse or touch screen. This works great also on the iPhone and iPad!
Whitespace trimming
This feature allows you to trim leading and trailing whitespace in values entered by users. It is enabled by default for new text fields and also lets you enforce that required fields cannot be left blank.
For more information, see the blog post.
For more information, see the blog post.
Improvements to itemset actions
Actions have always been able to update a control's set of items, but that itemset was global. When using repeated grids or sections, itemsets can now be local to just one repetition. This enhancements even enables dependent dropdown menus.Itemsets are stored alongside form data. This means that if you edit or review existing data, you are going to have the exact same sets of items present when data was entered in the first place (unless, that is, you run a service to refresh the itemsets again).
Quickly navigate to the previous or next control, grid or section in the form, without missing anything.
For more information, see the blog post.
JSON support
The XForm engine has the ability to receive and send JSON documents as per XForms 2.0. With Form Builder, HTTP Services support receiving data in JSON format.
For more information, see the Form Builder documentation and the XForms documentation.
Other features and enhancements
Form Builder
- Reorganized toolbox. We have reviewed the grouping of controls in the toolbox for clarity. In particular, the Text Output control is renamed Calculated Value and grouped with the Explanation control. Selection controls are enhanced and better organized.
- New common constraints. You can directly validate whether a number must be positive, positive or zero, negative or zero, or negative, without writing a formula. You can also set a maximum number of significant fractional digits for decimal numbers. (doc)
- JSON support. Services support receiving data in JSON format. (doc)
- Evaluate initial values in new iterations. Previously, the “Initial Value” formula would apply to initial iterations in a repeated grid or section when the form loaded, but not to new iterations added by the user while filling out the form. There is a new option to specify whether the “Initial Value” formulas applies to new fields when you add a new row to a repeated grid or a new section repetition to a repeated section. (doc, blog post)
- Initial number of iterations within a nested repeated section. The new “Initial Number of Iterations Uses Template” option specifies, when an enclosing repeated section creates a new iteration, how many iterations the enclosed repeated grid or section will contain. (doc, blog post)
- Controlling whether sections are open or collapsed initially. You can do this directly from the Form Builder UI. (Form Builder doc, doc)
- Controlling whether sections are collapsible. You can control this globally or per form with properties, but you can also do this directly from the Form Builder UI for individual sections. For example, you could decide that the first section of your form cannot be collapsed, while subsequent ones can be. (Form Builder doc, doc)
- HTTP Service editor improvements. The HTTP Service editor clarifies which HTTP methods take a body and features a new section to directly specify URL parameters when using the GET or DELETE method. (doc)
- Number control for the Integer datatype. The number control previously only worked with the Decimal datatype, and a plain text field showed for the Integer datatype. Now we use the number control for Integer too, so you get the benefits of number formatting for this datatype.
- Improved custom control settings. Custom control settings are much more flexible and you can use any form controls and layouts you want: dropdown menus, radio buttons, grids, and so on. (doc, blog post)
- Extension points. Form Builder now allows you to add a custom Form Settings tab and Control Settings tab. (doc)
- Versioning. You can overwrite not only the current version of the published form definition, but also previous versions. (doc)
New and improved form controls
- Radio buttons with "Other". This new control shows a list of radio buttons predefined by the form author, but alsoa custom choice ("Other") which the user has the option to specify instead. (Form Builder doc, component doc)
- Yes/No Answer. This control displays a simple "Yes" and "No" choice. It stores a value of true when "Yes" is selected and false when "No" is selected. (Form Builder doc, doc)
- Single Checkbox. This control displays a single checkbox and by default stores a value of true when selected and false when deselected. (Form Builder doc, doc)
- Wizard improvements. The wizard's table of contents indicates pages with errors more clearly. In validated mode, pages which cannot be navigated to are also indicated better. Last but not least, in validated mode, Save, Submit, Send, and other buttons which appear within the wizard only show when the user reaches the last page of the wizard. Finally, we made a few cosmetic improvements as well.
Mobile improvements
- Improved Number capture. We show the iOS numeric keypad or the "numbers and punctuation" keyboard pane whenever possible. This allows for much easier numeric input. (doc, blog post)
- Improved responsiveness. Mobile Safari notoriously introduces a delay upon touch, which makes interactive web apps sometimes awkward to work with. This iOS issue is fixed with iOS 9.3, but for users of older iOS versions, we have made clicks fast as well.
- Zooming and dialogs centering. If you zoom in a form and a dialog shows, we nicely zoom out so the dialog can be read properly.
Other Form Runner improvements
- Number rounding. The Number field has a new option to round values for formatting and capture values. (doc)
- Improved loading indicator. Orbeon Forms features new and improved ways to tell you what's going on when entering data, saving, and submitting forms. (blog post)
- Relational flat view improvements. The flat view supports nested sections and nested section templates. (doc)
- Minimal appearance for repeated grids and sections. This optional appearance makes repeated grids and sections appear leaner. (blog post, grid component doc, section component doc)
- Option to control email attachments. You can control whether all attachments, no attachment, or only selected attachments must be included in an email. (Form Builder doc, Form Runner doc)
- Multi-page TIFF generation. In addition to generating PDF files, Form Runner can produce multi-page TIFF files. Those can be used for archival, for example. This is an Orbeon Forms PE feature. (doc)
- Accessibility improvements. We have fixed a few accessibility issues.
- Versioning fixes. We fixed a number of issues related to versioning when processing attachments and sending emails.
- Language selector. We have switched to a dropdown menu for language selection, which makes the UI less crowded when a form is localized in many languages.
- Calling JavaScript with parameters. You can pass parameters to JavaScript functions from XForms. (doc)
- Easier XBL companion classes. It is much easier to expose JavaScript Companion Classes. This allows you to nicely integrate existing JavaScript widgets with Orbeon Forms. (doc)
Other new features and bug-fixes
Including the major features and enhancements above, we closed over 150 issues since Orbeon Forms 4.10Internationalization
See Localizing Orbeon Forms for the latest localization support. Localization depends on volunteers, so please let us know if you want to help!Browser support
- Form Builder (creating forms)
- Chrome 49 (latest stable version)
- Firefox 45 (latest stable version) and the current Firefox ESR
- IE 11 or Edge
- Safari 8 or 9
- Form Runner (accessing form)
- All browsers supported by Form Builder (see above)
- IE8, IE9 and IE10
- Safari Mobile on iOS 7, iOS 8 and iOS 9
- Chrome for Android (stable channel)
Compatibility notes
Deprecations and removals
- Removal of legacy Rich Text Editor (RTE).
- The rich text area expressed with <xf:textarea mediatype="text/html"> was using the YUI Rich Text Editor (RTE) which is no longer maintained by Yahoo! and has bugs under IE11 and newer. In this version, <xf:textarea mediatype="text/html"> now uses TinyMCE.
- This is relevant only if you are writing XForms by hand, as forms created with Form Builder were already using TinyMCE.
- Removal of Boolean Input field from the toolbox.
- In this version, we introduce a "Yes/No Answer" control, and we have removed the "Boolean Input" control from the toolbox. Existing forms are not affected by this. You can still create new "Boolean Input" fields by:
- Adding an "Yes/No Answer" field.
- Changing its appearance to "Boolean Input".
- Removal of Double datatype in Form Builder.
- For compatibility reasons, the list still shows "Double-precision floating point" for existing controls with that data type, but not otherwise.
- If you are using the Double data type, we recommend that you replace it with the Decimal type instead.
- See this blog post for more information.
- Removal of legacy Excel output processors.
- The oxf:to-xls-converter and oxf:xls-serializer processors have been removed. These processors have not been maintained in a very long time, use the old Excel format, and are not used by Form Runner.
- Deprecation of Scrollable List control.
- This is not a control which is used often, and it is present mainly because browsers implement it and not much else. The component remains present but is removed from the Form Builder toolbox.
- Deprecation of SQL processor variables (XML platform).
- When using oxf:sql, support for the long deprecated $sql:position and $sql:row-position variables has been removed. Use the sql:position() XPath function instead.
- Deprecation of legacy processors.
- The following processors are deprecated and we plan to remove them in a future version, as they haven't been maintained and are based on ancient libraries and technologies. If you use any of them, please let us know.
- Charts. The oxf:chart, oxf:chart-converter, and oxf:chart-serializer processors are deprecated.
- XSL-FO. The oxf:xslfo-converter, oxf:xslfo-serializer and oxf:pdf-serializer processors are deprecated.
- XMLDB. The oxf:xmldb-query, oxf:xmldb-insert, oxf:xmldb-update, and oxf:xmldb-delete are deprecated.
- Excel. The oxf:xls-generator is deprecated.
- Struts. The oxf:struts and oxf:struts-errors-generator are deprecated.
Other compatibility notes
- XML data format.
- The XML data format, as saved to the persistence layer, may contain additional XML attributes and elements. As of this version, this only happens when using the "Set Response Selection Control Items" action result.
- All such attributes and elements are in the Form Runner namespace, defined as xmlns:fr="http://orbeon.org/oxf/xml/form-runner".
- The following attributes may be added:
- fr:itemsetid
- fr:itemsetmap
- The following element may be added, with children elements:
- fr:metadata
- If you implement your own persistence layer, you must make sure that all elements and attributes in the Form Runner namespace are preserved.
- In the future, more attributes and elements in the Form Runner namespace may be added.
- Default number of digits for number field.
- This used to be set to 0 digits.
- Now this is set to any number of significant digits present.
- Setting URL parameters for GET/DELETE services.
- In an action, setting a URL parameter for an HTTP service with a path of the form /foo/bar, where foo is a custom root element name, no longer works. Use /*/bar instead.
- Actions setting a control's itemset.
- When using "Set Response Selection Control Items", if the destination control is within a repeated grid or section, the behavior is changed:
- It used to be that the itemset for all iterations of the selection control would be updated in all cases.
- The new behavior is that the closest such controls are updated. This allows, for example, setting the itemset of a repeated control based on a change of value of another control in the same repeated iteration.
- See the documentation for more information.
- When such actions are used, saved form data in the database contains additional attributes and elements in the Form Runner namespace (see XML data format above). The purpose of those is to persist the content of the itemsets obtained dynamically.
About the new Orbeon Forms versioning scheme
Starting with this release we are using a new versioning scheme with the number of the year first followed by the number of the major release during that year. Since 2013 we have had three (sometimes four) major releases a year, and we plan to continue this schedule, so the plan this year is to have 2016.1, 2016.2, etc. and next year 2017.1, 2017.2 and so on, with minor releases, when needed, having an extra digit like 2016.1.1, 2016.1.2, etc. This doesn't change anything to your subscriptions or support.Download and feedback
Don't forget to grab a trial license for the PE version.
Please send feedback:
- via Twitter
- to the discussion list
- or as comments on this blog entry
We hope you enjoy this release!
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