Fillable Form - Text Alignment changes when opened in browser

[Ko Za]

(see attachments) I build forms for the organization that need to be both fillable and printable. In some cases, the fields have lines associated with them should the form be printed and filled out by hand. However, although I have made sure that the text aligns with the lines when filling the form in using the Adobe desktop app, it does not align when it is opened in browser. Browser is the default setting for everyone in the organization now so everyone will be by default trying to view and fill out these forms in browser but some might also still use the desktop app. I need the text to stay aligned with the lines regardless of what is used to open and view it. How do I fix this?

[Thom Parker · Accepted solution]

The fix is to not use the browser. Put simply, brower PDF viewers suck. They generally suck because they typically implement a minimum of the PDF specification, and in some cases, features are implemented wrong. So, you should never use a browser to fill out a PDF form, ever. 

[Ko Za]

Yes, I agree but I don't have any control over that so it doesn't help me much unless there is some way I can force it to open in desktop only from the form side of things.

[Thom Parker]

Well actually, there is something can be done. A layer can be placed over the PDF pages that blocks the main text.  Layers can be hidden with a script. So a document level script in the document will automatically remove the layer, but only when the PDF is opened in a viewer that implements enough of the PDF scripting model for this script to work. Any viewer hides the layer is more than good enough to fill a form and align the text properly.

You can find an example here:

https://www.pdfscripting.com/public/Lite-Document-Security-Description.cfm