Stefan Cameron on Forms
Building intelligent forms using Adobe LiveCycle Designer

Archive for December, 2009

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!

Hello everyone,

I will be taking a break from blogging from now until the new year.

I hope you will enjoy the holidays! I will return January 4, 2010.

Stefan


Posted by Stefan Cameron on December 18th, 2009
Filed under General

Testing HTTP Submit Buttons

While recently helping a few people with some issues related to HTTP submissions from XFA forms, I ended-up creating new Data Service that helps with testing HTTP Submit Buttons.

The service is quite simple: It displays what you submit to it. Since Designer’s “PDF Preview” tab is actually an instance of Internet Explorer hosting a PDF version of the form you’re previewing (a temporary PDF if your form is saved as an XDP or is new), the results are conveniently displayed within the tab itself after clicking on the submit button.

To use the service, simply use either an http submit button (or a regular button with its “Object palette > Field tab > Control Type property” set to “Submit”) and set its URL to:

http://forms.stefcameron.com/services/http-submit-test/

The idea is to use this service as a means to test/debug your forms before spending time writing the actual server code that will receive the data. You can also use it to ensure that you are submitting the correct data to a third-party service (for which you don’t control the server-side code).

Continue reading…


Posted by Stefan Cameron on December 16th, 2009
Filed under Data Binding,Debugging,Tables,Tutorials,XFA

Sunset for Adobe Reader and Acrobat 7

As of December 28, 2009, Adobe will no longer be supporting Acrobat and Reader 7.x. Thankfully, there’s a transition plan in place for those who work in more “controlled environments”. See the link for more information.


Posted by Stefan Cameron on December 15th, 2009
Filed under Acrobat

XFA 3.1 Spec Now Available

The XFA 3.1 specification is now available. Note that while XFA 3.1 is supported by ES2, Reader and Acrobat will not support it until a future release. Therefore, you may want to stick with XFA 3.0 for the time being, unless you have a specific need for XFA 3.1 features within an ES2 environment.

Here’s a short list of what’s new in XFA 3.1:

  • relational data support for data containing multiple tables related by keys;
  • ability to bind to non-schema-defined elements (i.e. data injection into a schema data description);
  • long or short edge duplexing; and
  • support for more label printers, including Datamax Printer Language (DPL), Intermex Printer Language (IPL), and Tally Compressed Printer Language (TCPL).

Posted by Stefan Cameron on December 1st, 2009
Filed under XFA