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InfoPath. I'm
impressed. It so much rocks. It somehow feels like Web Services clients should
simply be developed like this.
Now, let me
- the humble person who I am - state some of my
wishes:
- Just make it a
development tool. I'd really like to embed InfoPath forms into my
WinForms apps.
- Give me Events,
give me the InfoSet. I'd love to fully integrate forms like these with my real
apps.
- Let me redist it
without depending on Office 2003. In fact, just include it in .NET and let me
redist it for free. The reason for this final - and
maybe aggressive - demand is that my client's customers [1] won't
easily allow me to deploy Office 2003 with our applications. And that's
not just for the cost of the licenses but instead for the testing and
support issues involved. It's hard to get them to roll out .NET - it's
absolutely impossible to make them roll out Office 2003 just for a small web
services client.
InfoPath is
set to be a perfect 4th generation tool to write simple web services
clients. By including it in .NET, you can make it heavily used by both, ISVs and
corporate developers. And, at the end of the day, it really feels like a
developer's and power user's tool - not something which belongs in your average
Office Suite, right?
If you are working on this team - or know someone
who does - I'd really love to hear about your ideas regarding these issues!
[1] I'm
consultant, my clients are software engineers - so I'm talking about the users
of their apps here.
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