Element Form And Nested Dialogues

As W3 forms become more complex, there is a need for nested dialogues to simplify the interface and save screen realestate. In the case of speech-centric browsers, such increased structure provides the means to produce succinct renderings of dialogues.

We propose nested forms, which has been forbidden until now. Such nested forms enable nested dialogues. With this change, the FORM element optionally starts with a CAPTION element. Nested forms have two states: open and closed. The default state is closed, and in this state, the form caption is used to provide a captioned "button" to open the form. In the open state the form may be rendered as a dialog box. In this state the submit button acts to close the form but does not send the form's content to the server. The form's METHOD, ACTION and ENCTYPE attributes are ignored for nested forms.

In the body of a form element, subforms reside at the same logical level as paragraphs. Subforms without a caption element are depricated since browsers will not be able to display a meaningful rendering of the nested dialogue.


T. V. Raman
Email: raman@adobe.com
Last modified: Tue Feb 18 09:53:57 1997