Form Nation

Keeping your custom panel layouts styled: Part 2

2008-08-22T17:21:41Z

Last week I covered a number of style names that can be added to your guide layouts when creating custom form guide components. By adding these style names to your layout you can take advantage of all the styling that gets defined in Guide Builder and is included with each guide definition. Similar to guide layouts there are also a few of style names that can be included in custom panel layouts.

Here are a selection of style names that can be added to your custom panel layouts. These styles can be defined by going to Customize Appearance in Guide Builder and navigating to the appropriate panel listed under each style name description. A number of these style names do not need to be included in your MXML since they are handled internally by the Panel Item component.

Style Name	MXML	Description
layoutobjects	styleName="layoutobjects">	Defines padding for your top-level panel layout container. Guide Builder: no editable in Guide Builder
panelhelp	styleName="panelhelp" />	Applies the font, background and border styles to the help panel component. Guide Builder: Customize field and text > Panel help background, font
fieldhelp	handled by	Applies the font, background and border styles to a field help component. Guide Builder: Customize field and text > Field help background, Field Active, font
panelitem	handled by	Applies the font and background styles to a field component. Guide Builder: Customize field and text > Field background, Font
panelcaption	handled by	Applies the font and color styles for field captions. Guide Builder: Customize field and text > Font
paneltext	handled by	Applies the font and color styles for panel text. Guide Builder: Customize field and text > Font

Keeping your custom guide layouts styled: Part 1

2008-08-07T00:06:10Z

When creating custom layouts to be used with form guides it is a good practice to ensure that your layouts can be styled. One method that will achieve this goal is to use the style names that get defined by Guide Builder. By adding these style names to various components in your layout you can take advantage of all the styling that gets defined in Guide Builder and is included with each guide definition.

Here are a selection of style names that can be added to your custom guide layouts. These styles can be defined by going to Customize Appearance in Guide Builder and navigating to the appropriate panel listed under each style name description.

Style Name	MXML	Description
application	styleName="application"/>	Defines the overall background gradient colors for the guide. Guide Builder: Customize guide, logo and progress bar -> Background
logo	styleName="logo" left="0"/>	Specifies a location to hold an image such as a logo. Guide Builder: Customize guide, logo and progress bar -> Logo
guidetitle	styleName="guidetitle"/>	Specifies font and color styles. Guide Builder: Customize guide, logo and progress bar -> Font
guide	styleName="guide"/>	Defines background color/image, border color, padding and corner radius styles. Guide Builder: Guide Builder: Customize guide, logo and progress bar -> Border, Guide background
panelnav	styleName="panelnav"/>	Defines font, background color, background image, background alpha, border and header styles. Guide Builder: Customize panels -> Panel border, Panel header, Navigation, Font
guidehelp	styleName="guidehelp"/>	Defines font, background color, background image, background alpha, border and header styles. Guide Builder: Customize panels -> Panel border, Panel header, Guide help, Font
paneldata	styleName="paneldata"/>	Defines font, background color, background image, background alpha, border and header styles. Guide Builder: Customize panels -> Panel border, Panel header, Data entry, Font
buttons	styleName="buttons"/>	Defines theme color, fill colors and font styles. Guide Builder: Customize buttons and repeater layouts -> Button color, Button theme color, Font

For further information on how to include form guide specific style names in your own layouts browse the guide source included with the LiveCycle install. The source and associated Flex project have been made available for all the default guide layouts, panel layouts and guide controls.

./LiveCycle8.2/LiveCycle_ES_SDK/samples/FormGuides/GuideSource

In my next post I will cover the various styles that can be applied to your custom panel layouts.

Tips and tricks from the form guide team

2008-03-27T17:31:09Z

A great new blog is now available from the Form Guide team at Adobe. This blog will contain contributions from many memebers of the form guide team as they discuss tips, tricks and best practices concerning Form Guides.

The team is also looking for questions and suggestions from those early adoptors out there already using Form Guides to help guide future postings so be sure to provide lots of comments.

The URL for the new blog is:

http://blogs.adobe.com/lcformguides/

technorati tags:lcformguides

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Drag and Drop support in Guide Builder

2008-03-27T17:20:53Z

Did you know that the Guide Builder tool included with LiveCycle Designer not only supports drag and drop from the Designer canvas but also from the file system?

I'll start with drag and drop with LiveCycle Designer. In Guide Builder the form hierarchy is provided to allow a user to pick form objects that they wish to appear in their form guide. While this hierarchy provides a quick way to see all the objects on a form they may not be easy to find particularily on a larger form. In these cases it may be easier to pick objects directly from the design view canvas in LiveCycle Designer. With Guide Builder running switch back to Designer and pick the fields you want to include in your form guide. Next, drag and drop these fields on top of Guide Builder. When a panel is selected these fields will be automatically added to that panel otherwise a dialog will appear asking you where you would like the fields to be placed.

If that wasn't cool enough Guide Builder also supports SWC, CSS, XML and XDP file types being dragged form the file system. How each of these files is handled depends on what view Guide Builder is currently in.

When in the Edit Guide view any guide definitions found in XML or XDP files will be imported into the current guide. Any SWC files that are dropped onto Guide Builder will be added as custom library components for the currently selected guide.

When in the Customize Appearance view any SWC or CSS files that are dropped onto Guide Builder will be used as a custom style for the currently selected guide.

For more information on using Guide Builder look up Using Guide Builder in the LiveCycle Designer ES Help.

technorati tags:guide builder

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Form Guide Documentation

2008-01-15T18:57:05Z

LiveCycle ES has now been out on the market for just over six months. This means people are finally starting to get their feet wet and are looking at form guides as a possible solution to create engaging data capture applications. As a result I been getting more requests lately on how one should actually get started creating a form guide. For those just getting started there is a fiar amount of documentation already available online that is worth reading.

Using Guide Builder (LiveDocs)
- The LiveCycle ES Designer documentation contains a whole section on how to use Guide Builder
Getting Started With Form Guides (PDF)
- This is a great document that provides an overview of form guides, walks through creating a new form guide and touches on customization.
Customizing Form Guides (PDF)
- If you are really interested in creating custom form guide components this is the document for you! This document provides information about creating customized guide layouts, panel layouts and controls using Flex Builder. This is also the place to go if you want to learn about taking advantage of the built in styling capabilities of form guides.

While these documents are great starting point for your form guide solution development over the next few months I will be posting additional articles that cover some of the holes and more difficult aspects of creating form guides. If you have specific questions feel free to leave a comment and I'll do my best to address it.

Meet me at MAX

2007-09-20T14:08:59Z

There is only a little over a week to go before Adobe's biggest developer conference ever kicks off and I will be presenting there once again this year.

Adobe MAX 2007 is taking place in Chicago this year from September 30 to October 3. This year's conference is shaping up to be bigger and better in all aspects than any previous year. If you are a developer using any of Adobe's products this is definately the must attend event of the year.

If you are already planning to attend MAX I would like to point out some of the exciting sessions being presented around the LiveCycle suite of products.

First, I will plug my own session that will cover LiveCycle Forms ES and its new form guide feature. Over the past year I have been on the form guide team in Ottawa busily creating a tool for LiveCycle Designer ES called Guide Builder. This tool is a Flex-based desktop application that provides an extremely easy interface for creating dynamic and interactive form guides. Without giving too much away I am really excited to talk about this cool new feature and how it leverages the best of PDF and Flex technologies. Please come by one of my two sessions to learn more about LiveCycle Forms and form guides and be sure to say "hi" as well!

Everything You Want to Know about LiveCycle Form Guides

Monday, October 1 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm (room #177)
Wednesday, October 3 4:15 pm - 5:15 pm (room #177)

So, what else should you do while at MAX? If you are interested in learning more about LiveCycle here are a few sessions I think will be invaluable.

Hands On: Designing PDF Forms and Flex-based Form Guides
Boot Camp for LiveCycle
Forms Gone Wild
Hands On: Building an Application Using LiveCycle ES
Hands On: Extreme Form Makeover - with LiveCycle Designer 8, ES and Flex
And like the infomercials say..."and that's not all folks"!

Stop by the after hours lounges in each of the hotels for some networking opportunities. If you want to learn more about Adobe products be sure to head over to the community pavillion. Finally be sure to come out to the LiveCycle meet the team BOF on Monday night starting at 7:30 pm.

This year is shaping up to be a great MAX and I can't wait to meet the people who are eager to learn more about developing great applications using Adobe technology.

See you at MAX!

technorati tags:adobemax2007, max, livecycle, flex

Introducing Form Guides

2007-06-28T15:36:44Z

formguides,livecycle

It has been way too long since I last updated this blog. Now that I back for what I hope to be much more frequent updates regarding LiveCycle, Flex and rich Internet applications I decided to give my blog a fresh new look as well.

Over the past year I have been on the team that has been actively developing the new form guide functionality released with the LiveCycle Enterprise Suite. In particular I have been developing the new Guide Builder tool that is included with LiveCycle Designer. Now that LiveCycle ES has been released this post is the first in a series I plan to write over the next couple of months that covers the new form guide technology and how it works.

Form guides are Flash Player compatible wizard-like panels that help guide people through a data capture experience which are rendered using LiveCycle Forms ES. While the form guide technology is included with LiveCycle Forms ES, there is also a tool called Guide Builder included with LiveCycle Designer ES that enables form guides to be defined from existing PDF and XML templates.

Imagine you have a document-based PDF form. While this form is very capable of collecting data it may not be the most intuitive experience for a novice user. Such a form is still required however for going offline, collecting signatures and printing. Also, if the form has been already imported into LiveCycle Designer additional scripting may have been added. Form guides enable a user to take their document centric forms and apply a new skin or user interface to them while still maintaining the same underlying data model. In fact, the data model is shared between form guides and the PDF so one could actually enter data in either and see instantly in both renderings of the form!

Providing a different skin to an exisintg PDF form is ony the first step in form guide generation. Form guides also provide a wealth of new features not available when simply filling out a document-based PDF. Navigation can be added, sections of the form will dynamically appear as a auser enters data and answers questions, transitions can be added and interactive content incorporated into the final application as well.

Guided Activities highlighted at Adobe MAX

2006-10-25T08:03:11Z

After the Blue Man Group performed during the opening general session at Adobe MAX on Tuesday we were treated to a number of demos of new products coming soon from Adobe. Near the end of all the demos Ben Forta did a demo of creating a Rich Internet Application from a document created in LiveCycle Designer. Since time was running out this demo got very little stage time but was quite compelling nevertheless. Basically what Ben's demo showed was that using Adobe products one could take one of the millions of PDFs out there, import it into LiveCycle Designer, specify the layout of the RIA by selecting fields in the Designer, and then rendering the updated XML form template using LiveCycle Forms as a compiled and integrated Flex application.

WOW!!! Without even having to open Flex Builder a business user will be able to create applications that leverage the Flex Framework from within LiveCycle Designer and have LiveCycle Forms handle the actual generation.

technorati tags:adobemax06, flex, livecycle, forta
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Hanging out at MAX

2006-10-25T07:46:37Z

I have been in Las Vegas for a few days now for the Adobe MAX developer conference and have kept quite busy. Getting a reliable Internet connection has been difficult at times though.

Since arriving on Sunday I have been working on finalizing my LiveCycle Forms workshop which I am presenting on Tuesday and Thursday. I also have spent some time at the LiveCycle pavillion (be sure to stop by if you're at the conference) and attended a few sessions with the rest of my free time. Oh, I've also managed to check out some of the Las Vegas strip and nearby casinos just so you don't think I haven't been outside yet.

So, after my first full day at my first Adobe MAX conference I must say that the experience has been very rewarding. Be able to meet people that use LiveCycle or are interested in using it is great!

For Wednesday I will spending my time between the pavillion hall and will also be atending Matt Butler's LiveCycle session. I am also going going to update my workshop content before Thursday based on feedback I received today.

technorati tags:adobemax06, livecycle
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Guided self-service applications

2006-09-25T15:36:08Z

Guided self-service applications allow customers to access information and perform routine tasks without requiring any interaction with a representative of an enterprise. They can also reduce operational costs through decreased paperwork and lower call center activity. Users can be given relevant information in the context of the transactions they are trying to complete and even have real-time collaboration with a representative when required. Examples of guided self-service applications are product configurators, online banking and e-commerce.

Rich Internet applications (RIA), such as those created using Adobe Flex 2.0, are an ideal candidate for creating a guided self-service application for the web.

Adobe Flex 2.0 can simplify complex, multi-step processes in a single, dynamic interface that provides a higher level of service to customers, resulting in deeper loyalty and higher-value relationships. An RIA built using Adobe Flex can also provide in-context prompting through audio and video integration providing the real-time collaboration required by self-service applications.

While a guided self-service application is an excellent means for effectively capturing data and providing a superior user experience, a complete Enterprise solution will also require the ability to archive signed documents, provide output that can be printed and offer the ability to go offline. An RIA cannot satisfy all of these requirements on its own but it should be able to integrate easily with additional server solutions in order to gain this additional functionality.

Adobe LiveCycle products are able to produce documents that can be signed, printed, archived and filled offline by dynamically generating PDFs that can be viewed using the Adobe Reader.

A RIA created using Adobe Flex and an application created using Adobe LiveCycle can then be integrated into one complete solution.

Want to learn more? Attend Adobe MAX during October 24 - 26 in Las Vegas and be sure to check out some of the Adobe LiveCycle sessions. In particular there is an Adobe LiveCylce Forms workshop that will show how to create and integrate a guided selef-service application using Adobe Flex and Adobe LiveCycle Forms.

technorati tags:adobemax06, flex, livecycle, adobe
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LiveCycle Forms at Adobe MAX

2006-09-14T22:19:58Z

All of the LiveCycle products are being featured in a number of different sessions at Adobe MAX this year. Whether you are interested in designing forms, capturing data, developing a workflow or are curious to see what is coming in the next release there is something for everyone no matter what their level of LiveCycle experience is.

This is the first year that LiveCycle technology is being showcased at Adobe MAX and along with all the valuable sessions, attendance at this event will also provide you with access to a number of evangelists, product managers and developers of the LiveCycle products.

If that is not enough reason to attend I will also be presenting a workshop at Adobe MAX on combining Adobe Flex and Adobe LiveCycle Forms to create a guided self-service application. This is one session that should not be missed by Flex and LiveCycle developers! I will be posting more details specifically about my workshop soon.

Visit the Adobe MAX website to register and to get more information.

See you October 23-26!

technorati tags:adobe, adobemax06
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A brief form server history

2006-08-01T16:29:10Z

I was reading a posting recently on FlexLive.net about how Live Cycle has yet to cross the technology chasm. This got me thinking about Live Cycle Forms and in particular its form server component. Did you know that this core piece of LiveCycle Forms is now seven years old?

The form server began as a research project back in 1999 in order to leverage the power of another fledgling technology called XFA. The idea was that with form templates being defined in XML one could dynamically generate forms for a variety of clients. The form server was first released as ReachForm and marketed as the easy way "for people to access and submit forms online using the Internet". The major feature of ReachForm then was its ability to generate form content for any browser from a single XFA definition. One could even generate multi-page HTML applications complete with client and server side scripting!

The form server was originally a Windows only COM-based solution written in Visual Basic. As a result it was a Windows only solution but could also be accessed by non-Windows platforms using SOAP. Over the next four major releases new transformation formats were added (including PDF!) as well as digital signature support and higher performance.

Today, COM is long gone and has been replaced by Java and J2EE. Some old features have been dropped but new ones have been added as well. Even still, while its implementation is vastly different the underlying architecture and core capabilities of the form server has largely remained the same.

My point here is that while LiveCycle does indeed have a chasm to cross the chasm itself keeps moving. What makes a good technology great is its ability not only to cross the chasm-of-the-day but also manage to keep up with change. Technology is liquid and any great software must be able to mold and transform itself in order to meet the demands of technology. The form server has proven itself over the past seven years that its core architecture is able to keep up with the pace of changing technology in the enterprise and still deliver the same great results.

The form server technology that is now part of Adobe LiveCycle Forms has stood the test of time and will continue to be innovative well into the future.

technorati tags:history, form, server
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Hello Nation

2006-07-20T15:52:44Z

Welcome to Form Nation!

As this is my first post as part of the Adobe blogging community I will provide you with the obligatory details on who I am and what I do.

My name is Anthony Rumsey and I am a software developer at Adobe. I am currently busy developing new technology that integrates Adobe Live Cycle Forms and Adobe Flex. Both of these products are extremely powerful on their own but when combined the possibilities will knock your socks off! Prior to entering the world of Flex I was one of the main developers on the Form Server product, which later became Live Cycle Forms. I also dabbled in software verification when I first started at Adobe in 1998 fresh out of University.

That is me in a nutshell. As for this blog I plan to write mainly about Live Cycle Forms and Flex with particular attention being paid to their integration since they is where my experience lies. I am sure I will also throw in other topis periodically just to keep things interesting.

Let the quest begin!

technorati tags:forms, flex
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