Back when I announced that Designer 8.2 and Acrobat 9 had shipped, I mentioned that there had been a “major tab ordering UI update”. The Team knew that something had to be done to address all the issues you had been experiencing (it follows that it was the most requested feature on my Designer 8.2 Featur-O-meter) and I think they really delivered!

Make it so

I think one of the most significant improvements to the functionality is that what you set in Designer is what you get in Acrobat. In the past, given certain circumstances, the order you set in Designer was not necessarily the order you would get in Acrobat. Designer 8.2 and Acrobat/Reader 9, together, fix that issue.

For example, this view shows the new Tab Order palette where tab order is set to “Automatic” which means the order depends largely on the visual placement of fields on the form, from left to right and top to bottom:

In this next view, I’ve simply moved the City field below the Country field. As you can see in the tab order list, City is now last in tab order simply because it’s positioned below the Country field (and it’s also highlighted in the list because I have it selected on the canvas):

Tab Order palette

The Tab Order palette is how you work with tab order in Designer 8.2. While there is still a “tab order mode”, you no longer (attempt to) set the order by entering tab order mode and clicking on fields on the canvas in the order you want tab order to be set. Instead, you do everything from the palette (sequence numbers are still displayed over the fields and you can still click on them to select their corresponding item in the tab order list within the Tab Order palette but the order itself is no longer set by clicking on the canvas).

Before we go any further, there’s some extra visual aids for tab order which you’ll want to turn-on (if anything, they’re really cool). In the “Tools menu > Options command > Tab Order tab”, set the “Display Additional Visual Aids for Tab Order” setting:

Now select the Tab Order palette (“Window menu > Tab Order command”) and you’ll automatically be entered into “tab order mode” (if not, click on the “Show Order” button on the palette):

Once this is done, set the order to “Custom” so that you can set the order you want.

To get a feel for what the order is (now that you’ve enabled the “additional visual aids”), you can simply mouse-over the fields on the canvas:

(In the above screen shot, my mouse is hovering over the City field.)

Setting the order

Using the object list in the Tab Order palette, the order can be set in many different ways:

• drag and drop the items in the list
• multi-select items in the list and drag & drop them
• make a selection and use the arrow buttons to move them around
• select one item and hit the F2 key to manually set its sequence number
• make a selection (either with the mouse or the keyboard) and change the order by holding the Control key while using the up/down arrow keys
• cut and paste a selection using the items in the palette menu

Form Fragments

The Tab Order feature also handles form fragments gracefully and treats them as “white blocks”. Following my address block example, if you make a fragment out of the City, State and Zip fields, that object is now treated as a single object. The tab order can’t be changed from the reference to the fragment (i.e. the tab order of the fields inside the fragment can’t be changed from the form that references the fragment) but it can be changed around it:

In order to change the tab order inside the fragment, you’ll need to edit the tab order in the fragment itself.

Text Objects

Finally, the revamped Tab Order feature is also capable of handling text objects. This comes in handy especially when you have a hyperlink somewhere in a text object and you want to control where, in the tabbing sequence, that focus jumps to the hyperlink and where it goes to afterward.

In order to set the tab order of a text object, you must uncheck the “Tools > Options > Tab Order > Only Show Tab Order for Fields” option in the Tab Order Properties Dialog (checked in the linked screenshot: you must uncheck it).

After applying the above setting, the Tab Order Palette will show all form objects, not just fields.

Apr 3, 2010 — Added “Text Objects” section

---

Posted by Stefan Cameron on September 22nd, 2008
Filed under Acrobat,Bugs,Designer,Form Fragments,Tutorials

---

Designer 8.2 and Acrobat 9 now support adding dot leaders in XFA forms. This feature is typically used when creating an index of some sort (like a table of contents) in order to lead the reader’s eye from one piece of information to another across the page.

Stephanie Legault, from the Adobe LiveCycle Designer Team, has produced a short video that explains how to use the new Dot Leader feature. Check it out — it’s very informative!

---

Posted by Stefan Cameron on September 18th, 2008
Filed under Designer,Tutorials

---

Hyphenation can greatly enhance the appearance of your forms, especially when the text is written in a language that tends to have long words like German.

Alex Kalaidjian, from the Adobe LiveCycle Designer Team, has put together a great video tutorial on the new feature. It’s definitely worth the 5 minutes to learn about it.

Note that the hyphenation settings under the “Tools > Options” menu represent default hyphenation settings for all new forms while the settings under “File > Form Properties” represent settings for a particular form.

---

Posted by Stefan Cameron on September 16th, 2008
Filed under Designer,Tutorials

---

In the past, I’ve written a lot of articles on submitting data to databases and web services but there’s another way to submit form data: via HTTP POST. In this scenario, you use a regular button object configured to submit to a web page via HTTP or you just use the HTTP submit button object and set the URL appropriately.

Steve, a colleague of mine who works on LiveCycle Designer ES, wrote two posts about this technique a while back. I’ve frequently referred to it in my replies to your comments on various posts so I thought I would include the links in a more prominent place so they’re easier to find:

1. The original HTTP Submit post.
2. An important update to the original post.

One use of this could be to make submitting data to a database more secure* than exposing the database on the Internet (which is seldom a good idea). For example, you could have your form’s data posted to a PHP page which could then relay it into a MySQL database running behind the scenes. Another popular combination is ASP and Microsoft Access databases.

* Please note that I cannot speak to the level of security of said suggestion/solution. I’m merely suggesting it could be more secure.

---

Posted by Stefan Cameron on September 15th, 2008
Filed under Bugs,Data Binding,Designer,Tutorials

---

Now that LiveCycle Designer ES 8.2 has finally shipped, it was time to create the very first Featur-O-meter Archive (for Designer 8.2).

I took some time today to re-organize my page listing (in the sidebar) in order to provide a list from which Featur-O-meter archives can be selected for viewing. You can use it to see how you voted on past feature ideas as well as which one(s) made the cut:

With Designer 8.2 under our belt, it’s time to think about what features will go into a future release so please start voting!

---

Posted by Stefan Cameron on September 1st, 2008
Filed under Designer

---