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S
SnowpeaMilkthistle
Participant
April 27, 2018
Question

Interactive PDF Problem on iPads

  • April 27, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 942 views

I'm trouble shooting issues I'm having with interactive forms viewing on iPads. Specifically radio buttons that trigger changes to other buttons which hold information. While these forms appear to be working perfectly on Mac and PC, my client had come back to me saying that on iPads some of the interactive features are not working correctly.

I believe this is basically caused by limitations in the pdf readers on iPad and I've found a few articles here from 2012 and 2013 taking about similar issues. I'm just wondering if anyone out there has any updates on the topic?

Thanks!

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

T
Test Screen Name
Legend
April 27, 2018

Well, the default reader on mobile devices doesn't do any kind of form processing. And each web browser and email client has its own idea what to - some will break forms and send you junk (most Mac users will see this) Frankly, if you want a simple user experience, you need to work with HTML5 forms and a professionally written web server system to receive responses. PDF forms are seductive, and 10 years ago they really seemed that they were going to be the future. The success of PDF killed them off.

T
Test Screen Name
Legend
April 27, 2018

Which PDF viewers are in use? Are you using JavaScript?

S
SnowpeaMilkthistleAuthor
Participant
April 27, 2018

Thanks for responding. I use Acrobat Reader. The forms are created in InDesign, so not using JavaScript. The problem is that these forms will be sent out for clients to fill on which ever reader they have set as the default. I'm assuming that all I can do is request the user download Acrobat Reader, but it's an awkward and unreliable fix.

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