LiveCycle - XFA Forms still used ?

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
February 28, 2020
4 replies
2056 views

I have experience from 2008-2010 creating and using XFA forms for automated PDF creation.

Is LiveCycle still a product - or has it been replaced - the Acrobat web site indicates that their Experience product replaces it - but there is very little information available on the Experience product. Does anyone have knowledge of uisng XFA forms and what is currently available ?

One would think that Acrobat might report their product features in a bullet form - for quick reference. etc ....

Thanks

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DoctorMPRyan

Participating Frequently

i started with acrobat ix and lc designer. ("please wait" snafu on opening to this day.) adobe switched to AEM which is corporate only. left us little guys out in the cold. i have reduced my adobe subsription from 53 to 21 today. i'm 69 soi started pc at 34, 1984. interesting now but i'm not getting the sellable product i expected 10 years ago. I talked to AEM. they'll give you a demo and blow the same smoke they used 10 years ago. There are few intelligent people left. my form, substance response list, livecycle. doesn't work. open from acrobat or reader DC, but it says "Please wait..." my site healthcard dot pro. it'll be there soon. It's free when it won't be my embarrasement, as it has been forever.

T

Test Screen Name

Brainiac

"Please wait" is by design if you aren't using Acrobat Reader. Download it (and tell all your users they must). And that they can't use their phones or tablets...

T

Test Screen Name

Brainiac

Confusing reply! When I say "download it" the "it" is the PDF. Download the PDF and open in Reader.

T

Test Screen Name

Brainiac

While Designer is now part of AEM, the focus is not on making PDF forms. XFA forms in PDF are virtually dead, because only Adobe products (pretty much) read them, and the number of people using Adobe products to read PDFs are in fast decline (new computers now all come with non-Adobe PDF readers, and users may not see why they should download anything). Worse, there are no solutions, not even from Adobe [who one might hope would have done better] to fill or display XFA forms on mobile devices; in some groups of people (e.g. students) Windows and Mac are a minority. Why does AEM Designer still exist? Because Adobe are pushing a server solution to convert them to dynamic HTML forms; Adobe are encouraging people away from delivering XFA in PDF, and it was dropped in PDF 2.0, which is the future.

Certainly, Acroforms are poor, function wise. I'd encourage anyone looking at PDF forms to look hard at the current state of the game with HTML forms before making a decision. And also, not to be seduced by the form looking "exactly as you want" - there are more important things than that, in many cases.

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

I agree with TSN.

As a web developer, I don't understand the attraction to PDF forms. Half the time, the interactive forms don't work in browsers. OTOH, HTML forms do work in all browsers and devices. So there's no need to download & install another app to view them. And from a programmer's point of view, HTML forms are fast loading and more flexible than PDFs because they work with server-side and client-side scripts.

Apart from legal and government filings for which PDF forms have become ubiquitous, I don't see much future in them. HTML is much better for gathering data online

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

radzmar

Community Expert

To create XFA forms you just need the AEM Forms Designer (formerly LiveCycle Designer). This product is still available but only for enterprises in packs of 10 licenses with a runtime of one year. If you have the older LiveCycle Designer ES4 you still can use it to create your dynamic forms. Its licence is unlimited and there have not been much changes in the AEM Forms Designer since then.

There's a trial version available you can check out.

https://thelivecycle.blogspot.com/2016/05/aem-forms-designer-trial.html

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

LiveCycle ended core support. Adobe wants LiveCycle Designer users to migrate to Experience Manager Forms.

Experience Manager is Adobe's DAM (digital assets management) tool.

https://www.adobe.com/products/livecycle.html

Experience Manager has a separate forum because it's NOT part of Creative Cloud.

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert