Posted by William Gill on 07/07/07 16:55

I am a one man shop and may go many months without using a specific
technology (flash, php, python, etc.) So when I have to update things,
or add new items there is always a (re)learning curve to deal with. I
like to try to do as much background updating as I go, replacing
deprecated items, and such. This is further complicated when I search
and get supporting articles that may no longer be relevant.

Now I am re-doing a couple of html forms and am wondering if it is worth
the investment (in time and effort) to explore the "next generation of
web forms?"

I looked into employing xml in my form data, but as far as I can see
there is no real reason to change from the simple html form and cgi
scripting that's been around for ever.

I understand there are portability, and standardization issues, but If I
have to write the scripting or programming to parse and process the
individual data fields, does it really make a difference if I use name
value pairs or xml?

I have one application that makes extensive use of a database, and the
user form gets changed semi-regularly, but the user does not access the
db, I do. Just to show you my mindset, I don't believe in dynamics for
dynamics's sake. Many of the pages on that site are db generated, but
the site uses only static pages. Because I can anticipate the user
request, I run a script that generates a couple hundred static pages and
publish them instead of asking the server to generate each page with
each user request.

Anyway, I would like some thoughts on the current state of html forms,
and what direction I should consider, along with the some of the pros
and cons.

Thanks,

Bill

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