InfoPath

Reading Microsofts announcement regarding their newest Office member, InfoPath, makes me think.

Rich Editing

InfoPath is a layout-engine based, dynamic forms editing tool for XML files. The engine behind it is probably a customized and stripped down version of the one in Microsoft Word.

The announcement sounds very exciting. I believe putting rich editing at the user’s fingertips in structured data entry environments will soon be one of the state-of-the-art features that competitive applications will not be able to do without.

Integration

An intriguing observation was made by Steve Gillmor in his InfoWorld column about XDocs:

Suddenly, a tipping point looms. Here’s a front end to any and all back ends, so you can hook XDocs up to SAP, Siebel, BizTalk Server, Domino – any source that exports an XML schema. In design mode, you point at a Web service and the WSDL returns its methods and schema. Mapping it to the form UI is a drag-and-drop process.

InfoPath leverages the power of black-box store-and-forward of text snippets by the client application.

Let’s cite Gillmor again:

Then there’s the integration with SharePoint Team Services. Saving an XDoc form template to SharePoint launches a built-in deployment wizard. XDocs uses property promotion to select the appropriate XML to display, rolling up multiple forms into an interactive Web page with visual formatting, validation, repeating records, and aggregation functions such as auto-summing.

Is this a glimpse of how InfoPath could be solving the Web’s user interaction efficiency problem? Meaning effective focus control, demand-loaded additional data and snappy UI dynamics?

Layout-based UIs

With InfoPath, Microsoft is on the verge of turning their highly advanced Word layout engine into another standard item in the common toolchest of every Windows application programmer.

Consider a hypothetical version of InfoPath, integrated into Visual Studio .NET as a different form design style (as opposed to the current one with static x/y-layout). Then consider the internal object model of InfoPath’s document to be accessible and manipulable as something like a DOM. This beast would allow .NET developers to build extremly dynamic, fluid UIs with down to the character formatting and layouting while still leaving them the freedom to add their own entry controls easily. Wow!

Authentic

For Altova, the makers of the ubiquitious XMLSpy product, InfoPath is extremely bad news. In fact, when I looked at Altova’s Authentic product a while ago, I wondered very much why Microsoft did not buy Altova right away.

Now it’s clear. Authentic does what InfoPath does, only Authentic uses XSL to format the source document. InfoPath probably uses a proprietary format based on the new Microsoft Word XML document format. However, with InfoPath included in Office, and with Microsoft’s savvy for layouting engines and user friendliness, Altova will face a difficult time.