Is Interactive pdf technology deprecated after 2014? How to develop interactive pdfs since LiveCycle Designer is no longer available?

[KS1311]

I was using Adobe Livecycle Designer to create interactive pdfs with fields.
How are interactive pdfs being created now?

[try67]

Using Acrobat, which was also used before. LCD forms have always existed alongside Acrobat forms, they did not replace them or were replaced by them (well, now they are, because LCD is pretty much dead).

[KS1311]

Adobe Acrobat doesn't provide the developer/designer like interface as we get in livecycle designer.
I was creating highly customized interactive pdf like:
1. Cascading drop downs
2. Auto generating fields
3. Show hide pages
4. Calculation boxes
5. validation messages

6. Color combination on Yes/No radio button etc etc....

I don't see that type of interface in Acrobat and also don't think I can create same functionality in Adobe Acrobat..
Again my question is which software is being used now a days for developing interactive pdfs

or

Parallel technology to create these thing

[try67]

You're wrong. Almost all of these things are available in AcroForms as a built-in feature or can be added using scripts.

The main differences between the two technologies that I'm aware of are:

- Ability to connect to an external database.

- Ability to dynamically resize text fields based on their content.

- Ability to dynamically reflow the content of pages.

All of these were available in (dynamic) LCD forms, but are not available in AcroForms, but beside that AcroForms can do pretty much everything that LCD forms could do, and sometimes more (and much more easily, in my opinion).

There are plenty of other technologies available for interactive forms (HTML is probably the most common), but PDF forms are almost always created using Acrobat, as I've said before.

[KS1311]

Well I don't find the tutorials/ group discussion/ videos to create interactive pdf from Acrobat as compared to LiveCycle designer.

Is there any specific reason why the software was deprecated ?
Or nobody was using it except me?

[try67]

It was mostly used by big-budget organizations, like the IRS.

It was not bad technology, but it was very complicated to work with, and had little support (basically, no other company supported it beside Adobe), which made it not worth for most developers to spend the time and effort required to create such forms only to have their users not be able to use them on mobile devices, or in browsers, or in 3rd-party applications.

That's just my two cents, though. I can't say for sure what was the reasoning behind it, as I don't work for Adobe, so this is just a "guesstimate"...

[try67]

Regarding the tutorials by Adobe: No, they are not very extensive. They basically cover the most basic tasks, but there are some very good ones created by users. You can find them here: https://acrobatusers.com/tutorials/ (this site is no longer active, unfortunately, so they are a bit outdated, but should still apply, for the most part).

And of course there are several forums here where you can get help with specific issues: PDF Forms or JavaScript

[try67]

... And there are tools developed by various people to help you get the features you're missing.

For example, I've developed a (paid-for) tool that allows you to create cascading drop-downs in an Acrobat form very easily, based on data from a spreadsheet. You can find it here: Custom-made Adobe Scripts: Acrobat -- Create Cascading Dropdowns

[MichaelKazlow]

FWIW Adobe is pushing https://www.adobe.com/marketing-cloud/experience-manager/forms-document-management.html as its replacement for LiveCycle Forms. Personally, I have kept with Acroforms, for folks with limited budgets Acroforms can do what I need.