XForms and InfoPath

Momentum is building around forms.  At a recent panel discussion Bill Gates was asked about all of Microsoft’s different forms technologies and indicated that the InfoPath technology was the best long term bet.  Here is the full text, but this is the crucial snipit:

BILL GATES: No, I think that hits it. They- today, a little bit you have to think of HTML, and then our rich forms where InfoPath is the one that’s definitely on the rise there. What we want to get to is where InfoPath’s at the high-level, then we have all these rich controls you can use, and underneath we have the Avalon runtime. We have a roadmap for InfoPath where it gets richer and richer, embraces our rich controls, and sits on the latest presentation system. We also have some ways that if you do your work in InfoPath in future versions, we’ll be able to project that onto classic HTML, although today you have to think, do you want to be pure HTML or be able to assume InfoPath? That’s the one that will rise in usage even as we’re compatible with everything we’ve got.

As Chief Software Architect, drawing these roadmaps and making them clear is a pretty important thing. Forms is the one that it’s taken us a long time to get a clear message out.

I am not sure that the statement above is a CLEAR MESSAGE, but it is a message none the less.

Of course Adobe has its built in forms capability in Acrobat and OpenOffice.org are not standing still, driving along the Xforms route.  XForms is discussed in more detail in this InfoPath article.