Adobe LiveCycle Designer 8 is an integral part of the form workflows in Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional. LiveCycle Designer and Acrobat have greatly improved the workflow for designing and distributing PDF forms and completely extracting form data into a spreadsheet.

Improvements in this workflow include the ability to detect fields automatically on a PDF form, Reader enablement for local data by Acrobat, and a smoother and more intuitive workflow between Acrobat and LiveCycle Designer.

The following is a summary of what is new in LiveCycle Designer 8.

PDF document import as artwork

LiveCycle Designer 8 now gives you two ways to import a PDF document. You can convert the PDF to XML as you did before. This allows you to edit the form content, make the form flowable or multicast it to other targets like HTML or PCL using LiveCycle Forms. However, some of the original layout can be lost if the fonts are not available or the PDF document contains complex graphical structures.

Now you can also import a PDF document as background artwork to maintain the original layout and appearance. Form fields can then be placed onto the PDF layout. These types of forms cannot be made flowable and the form boilerplate cannot be edited. If you import as background artwork a PDF document that was created in Adobe Acrobat and it contains form fields, LiveCycle Designer 8 converts those fields to the corresponding form objects in the Adobe XML Forms Architecture (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Option for importing PDF documents

Templates

Templates are designed to help the Acrobat user quickly create common forms. LiveCycle Designer ships with many common forms in various styles. The templates installed with LiveCycle Designer 8 now contain text and images that you can replace with your own company's name, address, telephone number, and logo.

When you create a form based on a template that contains fields with customizable text or images, the New Form Assistant wizard opens enabling you to change the information displayed in each field to suit your needs. You can also use the New Form Assistant wizard to create a form based on spreadsheet columns. LiveCycle Designer 8 creates a text field from each column you select in the spreadsheet, and the name of each column header becomes the name of text field captions.

Form distribution

After you complete a form design in LiveCycle Designer 8, you can use the Adobe Acrobat 8 Distribute feature to send the form to a group of recipients to fill out. The Distribute feature lets you send the form along with a set of instructions on how to fill it out. After recipients have completed the form, they click the Send button on the form to return it to the form creator with that information.

Spell checker

The new spell checker lets you check the spelling of text as you type or perform a global spell check when you complete a form design. In addition, you can use the spelling options to select the items to include in spell checks, the language to spell check with, and what dictionary to use. You can also add new terms to your own dictionary or correct existing spellings.

Field Editor

You can edit objects in the form design using the Field Editor (see Figure 2), which provides an easy way to access common properties such as the field name, type, and context menu. You can turn on the Field Editor in the View menu.

Figure 2. Field Editor

Digital signatures

In LiveCycle Designer 8 you can now apply two types of digital signatures: document signatures and data signatures.

Document signatures preserve the integrity and authenticty of the form over time. That is, the signature is persistent with the data and the template. It provides a "what you see is what you sign" experience both at the time of signing and at the time of verifying the signature at a future point in time. You can apply document signatures to an entire form or collection of fields. You can also determine which fields are being signed by a document signature as part of a collection. This allows you to create workflows where only part of the form is signed by one individual and then another individual signs other fields on the form.

Data signatures sign the form data and guarantee the data integrity during the transmission. You can apply data signatures to the data only for the entire submission.

Both document and data signatures allow you to specify a number of settings on the signature such as the name of the signature handler, roaming ID location, permitted certificate, and individuals who may sign—and the reasons for signing.

Test data generation

LiveCycle Designer 8 allows you to generate a data file from a form design. You can then use this data to preview your form and drive your dynamic layout. You can select the number of repeating elements to be generated in your data file.

Comb fields

Comb fields separate each character of a field with a line (see Figure 3). This is common on paper forms to make handwritten entries readable. LiveCycle Designer 8 now lets you create comb fields out of text, date/time, and numeric fields by selecting the Comb Field property and number of characters on the Field Object tab.

Figure 3. Comb field

Check box and radio button styles

You can now select the fill style of a check box or radio button. Your choices are check, circle, cross, diamond, square, or star (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. Check box and radio button styles

Button highlighting

LiveCycle Designer 8 allows you to specify the style of the button highlight you want to use. The choices are None, Inverted, Push, and Outline. The Push behavior allows you to specify different rollover and down captions.

URI references in schemas

Previously when creating data connections with schemas which reference other schemas, through mechanisms such as <XS:import>, those schemas had to reside on the local hard drive. Now LiveCycle Designer 8 permits those schemas to be referenced via a URI.

Presence settings

LiveCycle Designer 8 now allows you to define any form object to be visible onscreen but not when printed, or visible only when printed but not onscreen. Previously this was possible only with Button objects.

Script display

With LiveCycle Designer 8, it's now easier to show all the scripts in a page or the entire form. Select the form or page in the hierarchy and the Script Editor will display all the scripts in child objects. You can turn this option on and off in the Script Editor.

Transparent images

LiveCycle Designer 8 supports single color transparency in PNG and GIF image files.

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