XForms/Message Types

Motivation
With JavaScript you did not have much choice in how intrusive you were about alerting a user. The JavaScript alert function required the user to acknowledge a message before they proceeded in filling out a form. With XForms there are now three ways to proceed. Each has a different level of intrusiveness. There are three message options:
 * 1) ephemeral - a message that just appears briefly and goes away by itself
 * 2) modeless - a message you can ignore for now
 * 3) modal - a message the user must acknowledge before you go on

Screen Image
Here is a sceen image with the ephemeral message showing:



Link to working XForms Application
Simple Messages

Discussion
The data for the first and last message come from the body of the document. The modeless message is taken directly from the body by using an XPath expression into the model.

Note that the first event happens when you start to enter data in an input field. This is the   event. The other two use the   event which happens when you enter a return on the second example and press the button on the last example.