The impact of Acrobat 8 on electronic forms applications.

In November released Acrobat 8--its latest generation of software for creating and accessing electronic documents. But how will this software affect web applications that use PDF documents as electronic forms?

A new key feature of Acrobat 8 Professional is that it will allow a PDF form to be enabled so that Adobe Reader users can save copies of the filled-in form to their PC. There is however a licence restriction imposed by Adobe--the number of users who can save such a form is restricted to 500. Even so, the feature is potentially very useful and meets the concerns of many users who could not save copies of their filled-in forms. London-based software house Evenlogic has for some time been providing eForms solutions that overcome the restriction of not being able to save filled-in PDF forms. These solutions are web-based and allow organisations to make PDF electronic forms available on their website for users to fill-in, save, edit and submit. With eForms, the 'save form' restriction is overcome by allowing the form to be saved to a protected area on the web server. The user can then retrieve their form later and continue to work on it from the point where they had left off and submit it to the web server once completely happy with it.

You might think that Adobe's announcement of the save form feature would cause concern to Evenlogic. John Jarvis, Evenlogic's managing director is however upbeat. He commented:--"The save form feature introduced with Acrobat 8 meets a much-needed requirement for collecting form data from a relatively small number of users--the limit of 500 users seems sensible. If there are more users, then you are probably talking about a serious commercial application with significant workflow processes. This is the type of application that we generally get Involved in--all eForms solutions deployed so far support a higher number of users than the 500 user threshold."

"Our eForms solutions also have another key benefit in that, because form data is saved to the web server rather than the local PC, users can continue working on their part-completed form, from a different PC very often from a different location." "Rather than being a threat, we believe that the new Adobe save form feature will raise awareness of what is possible using PDF electronic forms, which should benefit everyone"

www.evenlogic.com