The W3C's XForms Working Group has published their first complete working draft for the next generation of XML-based web forms.

Previous working drafts covered just the XForms data model. XForms now comprises three parts: the XForms User Interface, a set of XHTML modularization elements which define UI widgets; the XForms Data Model, which defines structures and types for form data, and methods for expressing constraints on the data; and the XForms Submit Protocol, which provides methods for the user agent to transmit form data to a processing application.

The datatypes are described in a simpler language than XML Schema, although an appendix includes a stylesheet which performs a direct translation into the W3C XML Schema language.

The User Interface section includes many improvements over standard controls available in XHTML, including multi-page forms, reusable UI elements, grid layouts, grouping of form elements, and graphical labelling of form components.