Please help me out. Does A9PE contain LiveCycle designer? When I access help in A9PE there are LiveCycle Designer references. Is that a separate program?
Lauren
Does Acrobat 9 Pro Extended contain Livecycle Designer?
2009-05-15 08:50:15
My Product Information:
Acrobat Pro Extended 9.1.1, Windows
Acrobat Pro Extended 9.1.1, Windows
2009-05-15 12:49:10
#2
OK! Got it! Found it! So am I better off forgetting about developing forms in A9PE and use LCD instead?
Lauren
Lauren
2009-05-15 19:47:49
#3
Hi lpacini,
Deciding which form technology to use( Acrobat or LiveCycle Designer) depends on how you want your form to behave and what you want to do with the data once the form is filled out.
Do you want to have growable fields in your form? By that I mean will you have fields where you want the user to be able to type in as much information as they want and not be limited to a certain amount of space which is constrained by the field size?
AND
Do you want to use dynamic features like letting the user add rows and/or columns? An example of that is an order form where the user can add items and the form will grow based on the number of items they add.
Do you want to transmit the filled in data to a database on a server somewhere?
If the answer toany of those three questions is Yes then you should use LiveCycle Designer.
If the answer is No to those questions, then you may find it easier to use AcroForms. You can create great forms in Acrobat using the forms tools provided with lots of bells and whistles, it just does not have the dynamic features explained above and is not as easy to hook up to a backend database.
There are also other things to consider that would take too much time and space here but the above covers the basic reason to choose one over the other. Take a look in the Forms Galleries here for some examples of each and you can get a good idea of what can be done with each technology.
Hope that helps,
Dimitri
WindJack Solutions
www.windjack.com
www.pdfscripting.com
Deciding which form technology to use( Acrobat or LiveCycle Designer) depends on how you want your form to behave and what you want to do with the data once the form is filled out.
Do you want to have growable fields in your form? By that I mean will you have fields where you want the user to be able to type in as much information as they want and not be limited to a certain amount of space which is constrained by the field size?
AND
Do you want to use dynamic features like letting the user add rows and/or columns? An example of that is an order form where the user can add items and the form will grow based on the number of items they add.
Do you want to transmit the filled in data to a database on a server somewhere?
If the answer toany of those three questions is Yes then you should use LiveCycle Designer.
If the answer is No to those questions, then you may find it easier to use AcroForms. You can create great forms in Acrobat using the forms tools provided with lots of bells and whistles, it just does not have the dynamic features explained above and is not as easy to hook up to a backend database.
There are also other things to consider that would take too much time and space here but the above covers the basic reason to choose one over the other. Take a look in the Forms Galleries here for some examples of each and you can get a good idea of what can be done with each technology.
Hope that helps,
Dimitri
WindJack Solutions
www.windjack.com
www.pdfscripting.com
2009-05-16 04:00:59
#4
Thank you, Dimitri,
Our needs (right now) are simple. I work for a small private school. Every August we send out a truck load of forms for families to complete. Very expensive and counter to our "Green" commitment! I did a pilot earlier this spring with our Summer Camp registration form. We are expanding it to four or five of our "August mailing" forms. My plan is that our families will go to our Website and complete and submit the forms which will go to the appropriate folders of the respective staff members' Outlook Inbox, and from there into Excel Spreadsheets. Some of the forms may need to be printed at a later date, but basically the output will be lists.
Our summer camp pilot went quite well, although I stopped short of capturing the data in a spreadsheet. 90% of the families successfully submitted the forms, complete with digital signatures. Some families without computers at home were unable to get past firewalls at the public library or at work (or so they said!). I suspect that some did not even try; it was different and therefore bad!! Four of the five forms will go to the business office (my wife) who is a strong advocate; the other to the director of camp and enrichment programs who already had a positive experience.
The answer to your points one and two are no; three is yes if populating a spreadsheet is included as a database. Our forms are static. I want the result to be positive for both families an school staff. We store binders and binders of forms that are never used. Reducing these forms to spreadsheets would make the binders available for more stuff that is never used!!!
One last question... What is your experience with the legal standing of an Adobe digital signature? Our Director of Finance and operations is concerned as to the enforcability of digitally signed forms.
That you more than you know!!
Lauren
Our needs (right now) are simple. I work for a small private school. Every August we send out a truck load of forms for families to complete. Very expensive and counter to our "Green" commitment! I did a pilot earlier this spring with our Summer Camp registration form. We are expanding it to four or five of our "August mailing" forms. My plan is that our families will go to our Website and complete and submit the forms which will go to the appropriate folders of the respective staff members' Outlook Inbox, and from there into Excel Spreadsheets. Some of the forms may need to be printed at a later date, but basically the output will be lists.
Our summer camp pilot went quite well, although I stopped short of capturing the data in a spreadsheet. 90% of the families successfully submitted the forms, complete with digital signatures. Some families without computers at home were unable to get past firewalls at the public library or at work (or so they said!). I suspect that some did not even try; it was different and therefore bad!! Four of the five forms will go to the business office (my wife) who is a strong advocate; the other to the director of camp and enrichment programs who already had a positive experience.
The answer to your points one and two are no; three is yes if populating a spreadsheet is included as a database. Our forms are static. I want the result to be positive for both families an school staff. We store binders and binders of forms that are never used. Reducing these forms to spreadsheets would make the binders available for more stuff that is never used!!!
One last question... What is your experience with the legal standing of an Adobe digital signature? Our Director of Finance and operations is concerned as to the enforcability of digitally signed forms.
That you more than you know!!
Lauren
[i]Please help me out. Does A9PE contain LiveCycle designer?[/i]
Yes, Acrobat 9 Pro Extended includes LiveCycle Designer.
[i]Is that a separate program?[/i]
Yes, LiveCycle Designer is a completely separate program, although it gets installed at the same time you install Acrobat. If you check Program Files (Start-AllPrograms) you will see it listed separately from Acrobat.
When you create a form in LiveCycle Designer and save it, it gets saved as a PDF, although it is really an XML (or in Acrobatese and XFA) file with a PDF wrapper. This wrapper is what allows the form to be viewed in the free Adobe Reader, or of course, also in Acrobat. But forms created in Acrobat, called AcroForms, are different from LiveCycle Designer PDF forms and the two are not interchangeable between the two programs that create them.
I hope that is not too confusing....
Hope this helps,
Dimitri
WindJack Solutions
www.pdfscripting.com
www.windjack.com
Dimitri Munkirs
WindJack Solutions
pdfscripting.com