Extending Acrobat Forms with JavaScript

Table of Contents......Page 6 Introduction01......Page 12 01 Welcome to JavaScript......Page 16 02 Page & Document JScript......Page 34 03 Form Field Highlighting......Page 42 04 Checking Acrobat Version......Page 48 05 Calculating Form Fields......Page 54 06 Auto-Entering Form Data......Page 74 07 Roll-Over Help......Page 84 08 Dynamic Form Fields......Page 94 09 Dynamic Controls with Templates......Page 108 10 Keystroke Checking......Page 120 11 Field Validation......Page 130 12 Formatting Text Fields......Page 142 13 Alert & Dialog Boxes......Page 150 14 JavaScript Functions......Page 162 15 Creating Pop-Up Menus......Page 178 16 Interacting with Databases......Page 194 17 Reading & Writing a Database......Page 212 18 Generating Reports......Page 236 19 Where Now?......Page 248 A: Object Reference......Page 256 B: Regular Expression Metacharacters......Page 264 Index......Page 268 Sure, you can use Adobe Acrobat to create a great-looking form, but you might not know that a few simple JavaScript techniques can make your forms perform magic. JavaScript, a powerful yet simple scripting language, can automate and enhance your forms, making them work harder and smarter. Your forms can calculate order totals, display roll-over help, validate and automatically format user input, retrieve and analyze information from databases, and more. Best of all, you don't have to learn everything about scripts to take advantage of their power. This book offers truly practical, ready-to-use scripts that you can apply immediately to your forms to boost their performance and flexibility. Author John Deubert brings an easy, informative style to teaching scripting without fear. Before you know it, you'll be building the most useful functions into your forms

Unlike other books on JavaScript, which explain how to write JavaScript programs for the Web, Extending Acrobat Forms with JavaScript is the first and only book to explain how to use JavaScript to create sophisticated, interactive documents in Adobe Acrobat. Acrobat expert John Deubert teaches JavaScript programming basics in the context of carrying out specific, useful tasks in Acrobat. For example, you¿ll learn how to manipulate Acrobat with JavaScript to perform calculations, retrieve data from a database, process form data, and more. And each tutorial is broken down into small, manageable chunks so as not to overwhelm you with long blocks of code. A one-of-a kind book, Extending Acrobat Forms with JavaScript is a great resource for anyone who wants to gain more control over Adobe¿s extremely popular Acrobat software.