A couple of months ago, I began the first steps in launching an XForms industry portal, but personal events - my wife’s illness and work related issues - intervened. Both having been resolved, it seems like a good time to revitalize the site and push to do what I’d hoped to do then - build a central clearinghouse and community forum for the XForms community. To that end, I recently made the following announcement on the XForms.org site:

XForms is definitely beginning to be taken seriously in a number of places. The Mozilla XForms extension is becoming increasingly robust and bodes well to become integrated with Mozilla as “core” technology with the release of Mozilla 3.0. XForms solutions implemented in JavaScript are proliferating as well, the two languages developing a certain synergy that makes it possible to provide at least base-line support in all modern web browsers. Meanwhile XForms is beginning to make its way into consumer devices (stay tuned for more information about that from this site).

When I started XForms.org , my goal was to create a clearinghouse of information and help foster a sense of community for XForms developers. This news portal is a first part of it, but personal issues have, until fairly recently, made it difficult for me to devote to the site the time and resources I felt were necessary to make this work, and as such I apologize to those who have come here hoping to see major new news in the past. This is about to change, as we now have support to making this site become the premiere XForms oriented news site on the web.

As part of this, I wish to announce XFORUM: The XForms Community Forum , an open source, open standards community forum site built using the superb Simple Machines Forum software. My intention with XFORUM is simple - its a place where you - as web developer, IT manager, software vendor, business manager or general technologist - can go to ask questions, answer questions, promote open source projects and commercial products, shoot the breeze, and otherwise interact about XForms and related technologies. Membership is free and carries no obligation, and while there will be vendor specific sections the forum itself is independent of any specific company, so may be a venue to ask questions and get answers that may not be biased with a sales pitch.

It is my hope and plan at this stage to also extend this as part of an affiliated network of sites focusing on Web 2.0, AJAX and XML related technologies. More news about this shortly.

So, please, feel free to explore, to strut your stuff, and hopefully to make this one of the most useful fora on the web for this and related technologies. And bookmark this page as well, as XForms.org is now in business to provide the latest up-to-date news and reviews in the industry.

Enjoy!

Kurt Cagle

Editor-in-chief, XForms.org

I normally don’t like making such site announcements, but my hope is to make this site one of the most useful places for XML related technologies in general, and XForms in particular.