Creating a Form with Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional (Full Version)

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obialor -> Creating a Form with Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional (11/9/2007 10:01:57)

I recently bought Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional. The software is capable of creating a web form. Does anybody know if I can use it to create a form for Expression Web site?

Obi



Tailslide -> RE: Creating a Form with Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional (11/9/2007 11:39:56)

I don't know for sure but I'd be very wary of using something like Adobe Acrobat to create a web form for any use - it's surely not what it's designed for.

Much better just to create the code yourself or use an existing form system. If you have PHP then this is great: http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=128 If you have ASP then one of our forum members, WantToLearn has what looks like an excellent form generator for ASP/EW which you might want to look at: http://www.ctrfx.com/



obialor -> RE: Creating a Form with Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional (11/9/2007 11:48:15)

Thank you. I will check out the web references you gave. I have seen Adobe interactive forms on some websites, that is, forms you can fill all the fields directly from the webpage. Is this only for Adobe web editors?

Obi



Tailslide -> RE: Creating a Form with Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional (11/9/2007 11:58:51)

No idea to be honest Obi - but you often see bits of software that attempt to write web markup (not just forms) such as Word, Publisher, even Photoshop etc and none of them do it well.

With forms I think that it's vital to really get it done properly and so I just wouldn't trust an application that wasn't specifically designed to do the job (but then I'm just cynical!).

Just occurred to me - do you mean forms within a PDF document rather than within an HTML page?



obialor -> RE: Creating a Form with Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional (11/9/2007 12:10:49)

I checked up quickly Adobe Acrobat 8 Prof and got the following info which I am pasting for your review and advice:

About web forms
PDF forms can be useful for submitting and collecting information over the web. This is done by providing several button actions that perform functions similar to some HTML scripting macros. You must have a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) application on the web server to collect and route the data to a database. Any existing CGI application that collects data from forms (in HTML, FDF, or XML format) can be used.

Before you make your forms web-ready, make sure that your form-field names match those set in the CGI application.

Important: CGI scripts must be built outside Acrobat, and their creation is not covered by the Adobe Acrobat product.
-------------------------------------

What do you think? Is this usuable? Obi




Tailslide -> RE: Creating a Form with Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional (11/9/2007 12:28:19)

Ok so they are trying to generate actual HTML forms then - my advice, without seeing what they produce, would be to avoid them.

If you have PHP use the Green Beast form - if you have ASP use WantToLearn's form. Both will also include the server-side script to process the form for you. If you try to use the Adobe one (apart from the probably dubious markup of the form itself) it won't supply the form processor and you'd have to get that yourself elsewhere.

Edit - oh and both include some anti-spam measures.



mar0364 -> RE: Creating a Form with Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional (11/9/2007 13:56:18)

Those forms are fine for an Intranet. But exposing things like that to the web can get ugly. Not to mention accessibility issues.

Regards!
Rich




caz -> RE: Creating a Form with Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional (11/9/2007 14:38:27)

Acrobat produces some really ugly html, so if you are concerned about valid code at all don't do it. [;)]

You can offer the forms as a download for users to fill in outside of the website and this is generally the best option.

The Adobe user forums are a good place to ask these questions if you go ahead with this Acrobat user forums

although you will probably have to join up.



obialor -> RE: Creating a Form with Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional (11/9/2007 16:04:27)

Many many thanks to everybody who has responded. You have created a veritable knowledge base in our EW forum on this question. I take your contributions as authoritative. I will avoid the Adobe form generator on EW as I try to avoid a cobra on a dark night in an Arizona forest.

Obi



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