No runtime version of InfoPath

Despite my initial scepticism, and what I consider to be a lack of direction from Microsoft about how best to utilise InfoPath, I’ve been bitten by the InfoPath bug after the past couple of months or so and we’re using it as the central forms engine on one of the projects I’m currently involved with.

As I think everyone probably does, I did wonder about the lack of a runtime-only version of InfoPath. After all, there are viewers for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and I think Visio. You can use the Jet database engine to read .MDB files. But if viewing is all you want, you can use the files InfoPath creates - they are using standards formats like XSLT and XSD. LauraJ has the definitive answer on this topic.