Monday, December 31, 2018

Orbeon Forms 2018.2

Today we released Orbeon Forms 2018.2, the second and last major release of Orbeon Forms in 2018! This release is packed with new features and enhancements which should help form authors and form users be more productive.

Major features and enhancement

Simple data migration

Orbeon Forms 2018.2 introduces a new way to manage change, called simple data migration. This is an option which sits between "overwrite an existing form definition in an incompatible way" and "create a whole new form definition version". When enabled in the form settings, simple data migration allows you to overwrite an existing form definition, but keep certain changes compatible, such as adding and removing controls, grids or sections. (doc , blog post)

Simple Data Migration setting

Hidden fields

A hidden field works like most other form controls, however, it doesn't show in the form at runtime. At design-time, the control shows as a box with an icon so that the form author knows that a hidden control is in use. This is useful to hold intermediary calculations and to handle out-of-band validations. (doc)

Hidden field in Form Builder


Improved Excel Import page

The Excel import page is now organized as a wizard and supports selecting a specific form definition version as the import destination. (doc)

Excel import wizard with version selection

Improved Date control

This version includes a new and improved Date control with a new date picker. A new validation allows dynamically specifying dates to exclude. (doc)

Date picker with some excluded dates
In addition, the Date, Time, and Time/Time controls look more modern and have an option to take their "natural" (usually more narrow) width or to fill a grid cell entirely to facilitate alignment.

Optionally aligned date and time controls


Form-level control settings

Form controls can now have settings which are global for a given form. For example, say you need all Currency fields on your page to have a "USD" prefix instead of a "$" prefix, or that most number fields on your form need to show and round 3 digits after the decimal: you can now configure this in the Form Builder UI very easily.

Setting the default prefix of the Currency control for the form
You can also override those settings for individual form controls. This is in addition to global configurations you can do in the Orbeon Forms configuration properties file.

This is part of the Orbeon Forms component system and completely customizable for your own custom form controls as well. (doc)

Repeated content synchronization

Often, forms require some kind of master-detail interface, where you first enter a list of initial information and then complete the information for each item of the list in more details on a separate screen. Orbeon Forms 2018.2 includes a component which does this synchronization automatically for you. (doc)

The "Detail" view of a master-detail

Summary page versioning support

When more than one form version is available, the user has the choice of the version to access. (doc)
Showing version 2 of the ACME Order form

Reordering of actions and services

You can now reorder actions and services in the toolbox via drag and drop. (doc)

Reorderable actions

Other features and enhancements

Including the features and enhancements above, we closed over 90 issues since Orbeon Forms 2018.1.

    Form Builder

    • You can set frozen repeated rows from the Section/Grid Settings. (doc)
    • Created and updated Orbeon Forms versions are stored into the form definitions. (doc)

    Form Runner

    • User menu for login and logout. (doc)
    • New Dutch and improved German localizations.

      Internationalization

      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 71 (latest stable version)
        • Firefox 64 (latest stable version) and the current Firefox ESR
        • Microsoft Edge 17 and 18
        • Safari 12 (latest stable version)
      • Form Runner (accessing form)
        • All browsers supported by Form Builder (see above)
        • IE11, Edge 15 and Edge 16
        • Safari Mobile on iOS 11
        • Chrome for Android (stable channel)

      Compatibility notes

      Internet Explorer support

      Support for IE10 is removed.

      Grid and section components

      The legacy minOccurs and maxOccurs attributes are no longer supported. Use min or max instead. For max, the unbounded value is no longer supported. Omit the max attribute or use none instead.

      Download and feedback

      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!
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