Form Nation

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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Posted by Anthony Rumsey at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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.

1. Using Guide Builder (LiveDocs)
   • The LiveCycle ES Designer documentation contains a whole section on how to use Guide Builder
2. 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.
3. 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.

Posted by Anthony Rumsey at 01:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)