Orbeon Forms 2019.1
Wednesday, October 24, 2019
Today we released Orbeon Forms 2019.1! This release is packed with new features and enhancements which should help form authors and form users be more productive.
You can now control whether a non-repeated grid is readonly or visible, as was the case already for repeated grids or sections (repeated or not). In fact, all the repeated grid settings are now available for non-repeated grids, including:
- Page break before
- Custom CSS classes
- Visibility and Read-Only formulas
Grid Settings for repeated and non-repeated grids
As was already the case for sections, you can make a non-repeated grid repeated by enabling the "Repeat Content" checkbox, and vice versa.
The internal data format has been upgraded. See further below for compatibility notes. The external data format is unchanged by default.
Several constructs in a form can depend on one or more form controls. This includes:
- "Calculated Value", "Initial", "Visibility", "Read-Only", and "Constraint" formulas
- dynamic label, hint, help, and email templates
- action requests and results
In this version, when a form control, section, or grid is renamed, formulas, templates, and actions are all automatically adjusted.
Example of formula affected by automatic renaming
The "Autocomplete" control is deprecated and replaced with new options for the "Static Dropdown" and "Dynamic Dropdown" controls. You can now, for each of these controls, select a "With Search" option, which allows the user to type in a search box to restrict the number of entries in the dropdown before selecting one.
Example of search within a dropdown
Form Builder options to enable dropdown search
Until now you could move sections up and down, as well as inside and outside of other sections, but you couldn't do the same with grids. Now you can and arrows show next to grids as well.
Moving a grid relatively to another grid
Since Orbeon Forms 2018.2, "Calculated Value" fields show as gray fields by default. The reasons for this include better visibility and accessibility.
This version makes further improvements to this change of appearance, as many users use "Calculated Value" fields not just as calculated values, but as a way to output text in various circumstances. We added:
- an option to allow choosing "Calculated Value" fields with a border ("full") or without a border ("minimal"). This change is also available with Orbeon Forms 2018.2.3.
- a global setting to allow changing the default across the board. By default, the global setting is configured to follow backward compatibility. This change has been made available to Orbeon Forms 2018.2.4. Forms use the following default:
- Prior to Orbeon Forms 2018.2: "minimal" appearance.
- Starting with Orbeon Forms 2018.2: "full" appearance.
In general, we recommend using the "Explanatory Text" control to present some text to the user. Since this version, note that the "Explanatory Text" can also be dynamic with the support for templates (further on this below).
Choice of Calculated Value appearance
This version introduces an improvement to synchronized master-detail views: it allows each individual detail to show on a separate wizard page. This makes it easier for the user as there is less information presented on each wizard page. In addition, you can configure a custom repetition label for use by the wizard's table of contents.
Detail view appearing in the wizard table of contents
When the service response is in JSON format, you can view the JSON response translated into XML. This is useful when you want to use XPath expressions to access a JSON response, for example with datasets or item choices. (doc)
XML view of a JSON response in Form Builder
When versioning is available, Form Builder allows you to publish multiple versions of a section templates library. Now, Form Builder allows you to select which version of a section templates library you want to use in a particular form definition. (doc)
Choice of section template version in the Form Builder toolbox
Field-level encryption now also works with file attachments, so, should you choose to, you can have attachments encrypted at rest. (doc)
- The date picker supports keyboard navigation.
- Orbeon Forms performs expired and idle connections checking, which can improve the reliability of connections to remote servers. (doc)
- Orbeon Forms is now supported on Java 11.
- The Orbeon Forms proxy portlet is now supported with Liferay 7.1.3 GA4.
With this version, a new Danish localization is available thanks to a kind contributor!
See also:
- Localizing Orbeon Forms for information about how to localize Form Builder and Form runner in additional languages. Localization depends on volunteers, so please let us know if you want to help!
- Form Builder (creating forms)
- Chrome 77 (latest stable version)
- Microsoft Edge 17 and 18
- Safari 13 (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 13
- Chrome for Android (stable channel)
The "Autocomplete" control is deprecated. See "Improved selection dropdowns" above for details. At this time, the "Autocomplete" is still supported but we recommend using the newer controls instead. See also the documentation.
Support for the eXist database is deprecated. We recommend using an external relational database instead. This means that:
- We don't recommend using eXist for production.
- We don't plan to add new features that target eXist.
- As of Orbeon Forms 2019.1, eXist is still used for demo forms.
The internal data format for non-repeated grids has been upgraded (in the same way that it was upgraded for Orbeon Forms 4.8). This doesn't change the default data format in the database unless you explicitly change that: the Orbeon Forms 4.0.0 format remains the default.
However, if your forms use formulas or custom XForms which depend on the internal data format, you might need to make adjustments. Specifically, if you use XPath expressions that assume that controls within a grid don't have an enclosing element, you will need to update these expressions.
The date, time, and date/time output formats have changed to match the input formats as this was a frequently-mentioned inconsistency. This impacts the review and PDF modes, and the formatting of values in emails. For example, previously a date/time would show "Friday October 16, 2009 17:48:03" in review and PDF modes. Now it shows "10/16/2009 5:48:03 pm" like for the input format.
<property as="xs:string" name="oxf.xforms.format.output.date">
if (. castable as xs:date) then format-date(xs:date(.), '[FNn] [MNn] [D], [Y]', xxf:lang(), (), ()) else .
</property>
<property as="xs:string" name="oxf.xforms.format.output.dateTime">
if (. castable as xs:dateTime) then format-dateTime(xs:dateTime(.), '[FNn] [MNn] [D], [Y] [H01]:[m01]:[s01]', xxf:lang(), (), ()) else .
</property>
<property as="xs:string" name="oxf.xforms.format.output.time">
if (. castable as xs:time) then format-time(xs:time(.), '[H01]:[m01]:[s01]', xxf:lang(), (), ()) else .
</property>
The
oxf.xforms.resources.javascript-at-bottom property, which was deprecated with Orbeon Forms 2018.1, no longer has any effect. (doc)The
oxf.xforms.update-repeats property, which was deprecated with Orbeon Forms 2018.1, is now removed. (doc)We hope you enjoy this release!
Last modified 3mo ago