simple-host sample application does not render sample forms correctly

Hi Tom,

There are actually a number of differences you may see between a document rendered in Internet Explorer and the same document in our Renderer component. Some of these differences are intentional, others are problems which can arise from misuse.

In due course, we shall have the Renderer component comprehensively documented over on the Sidewinder developer site [1] but, in the meantime, I hope that the following points will prove helpful to you:

1. The Renderer has a strict requirement that documents are well-formed, whereas Internet Explorer attempts to handle everything that is thrown at it. There was a bug in some versions of the Renderer that caused it to successfully return from failed calls to the Load... methods, so it is worth keeping in mind that documents which look okay in IE may not render at all using our component.
2. Because it takes only well-formed documents, the Renderer is able to apply XSL transformation steps to documents as they are loaded. The ultimate aim of these steps is to produce a rendered document that appears as it would in other XHTML-conformant browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox. So it could be that some of the differences you mention are caused by these transformation steps. In later versions of the Renderer, we have externalised the stylesheet [2] so that it may be edited (or removed entirely) according to individual requirements.
3. The renderer attempts to intelligently resolve certain namespaces in a document by automatically wiring in binary behaviors, such as formsPlayer or the Adobe SVG Viewer. Because of this, you do not need to have (and should not include) object tags in documents that are passed to the Renderer component. So, a difference that you will notice in the last two forms from your list above is that, in the Renderer, formsPlayer will be invoked to handle the XForms elements, whereas Internet Explorer will not render them correctly because there are no object tags.
4. The renderer runs a simple conversion of CSS 3 namespace rules, which are not supported by Internet Explorer. So this may cause styles that are effectively ignored by Internet Explorer to become active when you view the document as rendered in our Renderer component.

By the way, if you are feeling particularly adventurous while looking at this stuff, you may want to try experimenting with version 5 of the Renderer, which is installed with version 2.1.1 of Sidewinder [3]. Some of the interfaces have changed from version 4, so it will require a little bit of investigation on your part, but there are some pretty hefty performance benefits and bug fixes in there that should make it worthwhile. Version 5 is considered stable and will be made part of formsPlayer (and documented) in the near future.

If the above doesn't help you out, give me a detailed description of some of the specific differences that you are concerned about and I will look into it more closely for you.

Regards,
Phil.

[1] http://sw.swcube.com/
[2] Program Files\Common Files\Sidewinder\Renderer\IE-HTML.xsl
[3] http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=204948

--
Phil Booth, formsPlayer
www.formsPlayer.com
standards. innovation.