When launching my new company website, I added a new feature—a PDF employment application. I stumbled my way thru making it a automated form back in December. But it worked.
It’s been up a while and I’ve started hearing about some people having problems with it. And I shouldn’t expect someone applying for a factory job to be capable of handling Acrobat forms beyond following instructions.
So I started over. What a chore.
First, please know that there are two ways of making a form in Acrobat 8–There is a form menu and subsequent toolbar, and a separate program called ‘Live Cycle’.
One problem was two ‘operation not permitted’ error boxes when opening the form. This is because EVERY font has to be embedded in the PDF when using the ‘Live Cycle’ form-creator. (It sees the attempt to use the user’s fonts as a possible security risk.) And once you edit the PDF using Live Cycle, you can’t go back to modifying the underlying document. Which is why I was stuck rebuilding the form. Hell 1.
Part of the steps you need to do when making a form editable is going to the ‘advanced’ menu to change permissions so the user can save the PDF with their entries. This would also fix the ‘operation not permitted’ problem, I believe. Its an obscure step, IMHO. Hell 2.
The other problem was that some users needed to submit from a webmail client like Yahoo, Hotmail, or (if they are hip) Gmail. The Live Cycle program automatically created two buttons, one to email the document, the other to print it out. Webmail clients need to save the PDF and manually attach it. Hell 3.
I can fix that—I’ll just add another button that uses a script to open ‘save as’ so the user knows to save the file before sending. And I could do that. Cool.
Except Acrobat wouldn’t show the button’s label text. Dunno why. So I tried editing the form using Live Cycle…now the label shows up, but the script is gone because Live Cycle can’t do that function. Damn. Hell 4.
I could go on, but I’ve probably already bored you. And I won’t even mention the problems with getting different Acrobat Readers to open and use the final result. Hell 5.
The point is that if you want to have a PDF form that website visitors need to fill out, it ain’t easy to make—it’s pure hell!
I sympathise with you, but why would you want to do this anyway? Why not use a regular HTML form to input any data, and then use one of the many on-the-fly PDF-creation tools to create the PDF you need – if you need it at all?Also read what Jakob Nielsen says about using PDF as part of your web-UI (don’t!) at http://www.useit.com.
I sympathise with you, but why would you want to do this anyway? Why not use a regular HTML form to input any data, and then use one of the many on-the-fly PDF-creation tools to create the PDF you need – if you need it at all?Also read what Jakob Nielsen says about using PDF as part of your web-UI (don’t!) at http://www.useit.com.
Jan–Thanks, I wish I could. The job application form is an ISO-9001 document, so repurposing it as HTML may not be legal without changing the rules. And I didn’t want to get too buried doing HR’s work. Proof there are no short-cuts.HTML forms can be almost as fussy as Acrobat, but at least I understand them, so it is a tempting idea. Maybe next time.
Jan–Thanks, I wish I could. The job application form is an ISO-9001 document, so repurposing it as HTML may not be legal without changing the rules. And I didn’t want to get too buried doing HR’s work. Proof there are no short-cuts.HTML forms can be almost as fussy as Acrobat, but at least I understand them, so it is a tempting idea. Maybe next time.