Big news in the ability for XForms to run under non-Firefox browsers. By the end of June there will be a new IBM/webBackplane XForms client library that will allow XForms 1.1 applications to run under IE.

Here is the link to the Google Code web site:

http://groups.google.com/group/ubiquity-xforms

By September they plan support Safari.

The plan is to build a smoother on-ramp to get AJAX/JavaScript people to use the XForms specification. To get a fast start they will be working with some of the Mark Birbeck’s FormsPlayer code base. The team plans to use the newer AJAXSLT XPath libraries from Google.

This is a big development and it is not a coincidence that they are hosting it on Google code. They are hoping to partner with Google in the future to bring desktop-quality applications to the web.

I am sure that we will be hearing more about this in the near future.