About form development
Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 provides many features that allow developers to extend the functionality of their forms. Using these features, developers can write scripting code to perform a variety of tasks, including custom data validation, error handling, form submission, form merging, accessing external data sources, and responding to form and data validation events.
InfoPath uses the Microsoft Script Editor (MSE) integrated development environment for creating and debugging scripting code. When used with the InfoPath object model and form definition (.xsf) file, MSE provides developers with the tools they need to customize forms.
The following are some of the development features that are implemented in InfoPath:
- Event handler creation in design mode
- MSE
- Support for the Microsoft JScript and Microsoft VBScript programming languages
- Script debugging
- InfoPath object model
- InfoPath form definition file
- Object model and form security measures
- Roundtripping of custom view changes
- Custom task panes
- Custom toolbars
- Custom dialog boxes
- Custom menus
- Developer Help in the InfoPath Developer's Reference, including conceptual topics, an InfoPath object model reference, an InfoPath XSF reference, documentation of the developer sample forms, and documentation of common programming tasks
- Documentation for MSE, JScript, VBScript, and Microsoft XML Core Services (MSXML)
- InfoPath Developer Center on the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN)