Chapter 46. USING ADOBE DESIGNER (WINDOWS CS2 ONLY)

IN THIS CHAPTER

Best Practices (When to Use and Not Use Designer) 1026
New Features (What Was Designer Previously?) 1027
File Format Chart (Import, Export, Save) 1028
Creating a Simple Form 1028
Barcodes and Custom Objects 1038
Substituting and Embedding Fonts 1038
JavaScript Inside Forms 1039

Adobe Designeralso known by its official name of Adobe LiveCycle Designeris part of LiveCycle, an Adobe family of programs aimed at streamlining the production and processing of intelligent documents and forms in an enterprise environment. Designer's part in that initiative is the creation of electronic PDF and XDP forms and form templates. Designer uses the same form creation tools found in Acrobat but provides more customization options. A lot more, actually, which is the reason why Adobe has included it in the Creative Suite (see Figure 46.1).

Figure 46.1. Designer shows its LiveCycle roots in its welcome screen and in an interface that is different than that of Illustrator, Photoshop, or GoLive.

LiveCycle is geared toward enterprise management of documents (especially government documents). Because most enterprise document handling is Windows based, Adobe has focused on that platform. There is no Mac version of LiveCycle programs.