Darren,

a. Clearly the use case we have been focusing on right now is the
first one: i.e. you run Form Runner separately and you integrate it
with your app by liking in and out of Form Runner and customizing the
L&F if needed.

This said, embedding is requested fairly often and has been achieved
in the past. For example, we embedded Form Runner within a PHP CMS
called TYPO3, though an extension which implements proxying, see:

http://wiki.orbeon.com/forms/doc/developer-guide/form-runner/typo3-extension

You could replicate that in Java, although we don't have such a
component out of the box.

We also have an "Ajax portlet" mode which, to be fair, we haven't
tested recently, but did something similar although 100% based on
Ajax:

http://wiki.orbeon.com/forms/doc/contributor-guide/xforms-ajax-portlet

So it is doable and the code has quite a bit of support for this, but
there might be a bit of customization work needed to adapt to your
scenario.

b. The buttons bar is customizable in that you can add/remove buttons
using properties, and you can probably override the CSS to match the
L&F of your buttons.

c. In nightly builds, Form Runner works again within Liferay (it was
broken in 3.8.0). So that might be an option as well, if a heavier one
- and, in our experience, maintaining code for Liferay and other
portals has shown a bit painful due to the extra complexity of the
setup.

I hope this helps,

-Erik

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 1:00 PM, darrencruse <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Really a broad newbie question here so I apologize, but I wanted to ask if
> Orbeon Form Builder/Form Runner is intended as a better/faster way to
> incorporate XForms on general web sites, or is it better thought of
> *specifically* as an analog to something like InfoPath with the whole idea
> being that an enterprise creates forms using Form Builder and their people
> use the forms only through Form Runner as a "form application program".
>
> e.g. Let's say I'm building an ecommerce oriented site where the general
> navigation and look and feel for the site is already/separately defined and
> implemented (but let's say it will read from eXist for it's product
> catalog), but let's say Orbeon Forms were used just for the forms to allow
> products to be added in the product catalog.
>
> And let's say these product entry screens are required to have the look and
> feel of the rest of the site, and the same authentication, i.e. it's not
> acceptible for me to just run Orbeon separately on the side as an admin
> tool, it has to be integrated.
>
> Specifically, I'm wondering:
>
> a.  If the navigation/branding for the rest of the site were already done,
> using some templating scheme (tiles, sitemesh, whatever), could forms built
> with Orbeon Form Builder be deployed such that they could have their
> headers/footers/nav bar stuff applied with these other technologies?  So the
> form built with form builder appears inside the page whose navigation and
> branding around the edges comes from the other site (ideally without using a
> frame though I didn't think of that till now :).
>
> b.  When I publish forms from Form Builder, the default Form Runner includes
> buttons in the button bar like the preview button and the PDF button that I
> wouldn't want.  Ideally I'd want to define my own button bar and control
> what buttons appear, what their labels are, and even the look and behavior
> of them (e.g. to match the buttons on the rest of the site).
>
> I did notice the section on configuration which explains how e.g. to omit
> buttons on the "button bar" that form runner displays...  and how to
> override CSS style sheets...
>
> But I didn't see anything about adding a completely custom button with
> custom behavior to the button bar of form runner.  Can this be done?
> Could/would you omit all the standard buttons and maybe use Form Builders
> buttons to create an alternative button bar above the (now blank except for
> the status/error icon on the left) standard button bar area?
>
> c.  I notice the docs mention using portlets to integrate things e.g. if the
> overall site were built on LifeRay Portal so the branding and navigation
> could be LifeRay and even use it's "themes".
>
> Anybody have experience with this?  Does form runner play forms built with
> for builder okay in Liferay portlets?  Any gotchas?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Darren
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://orbeon-forms-ops-users.24843.n4.nabble.com/Orbeon-Form-Builder-Form-Runner-for-a-regular-web-site-tp2552615p2552615.html
> Sent from the Orbeon Forms (ops-users) mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>

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