IBM Workplace Forms: Guide to Building and Integrating a Sample Workplace Forms Application

70 IBM Workplace Forms: Guide to building and integrating a sample Workplace Forms application

4.4 Starting to build forms: Initial creation, design, and layout

Throughout these next sections, we discuss how to create the initial forms and establish the

key design and layout of the forms. We approach the issue in terms of what needs to be done:

first, for the traditional form pages, and second, for the subsequent wizard pages.

In our Sales Quote Approval sample we used a scanned image as a template for the

traditional form page. You then add the items to the page and usually remove the template

when you are done designing the traditional form.

The wizard pages are then designed from scratch starting at a blank page. First, we defined

the layout of the form before we added the items. You may want to sketch the layout on paper

before you start building it in the Designer.

4.4.1 Designing the layout of the traditional form

The following sections discuss the first step in building your forms — namely, beginning with

the correct layout.

Page setup

The first step is to create the necessary pages for the traditional form and wizard pages that

you designed for your layout. Typically the wizard pages and the traditional pages have

different page size and layouts that are consistent throughout the entire form.

4.4.2 Building the traditional form page

First we outline how to begin by creating the template for the traditional form page. Once this

is built, we will follow on with information about how to build the wizard pages.

Attention: For your help in building this sample application, we provide the image we use

for the scanned form. This file Form_Page_scanned_image.jpg can be downloaded from

the Additional Materials with the book. See Appendix A, “Additional material” on page 333

for detailed information about how to download the file.

See Appendix 4.4.3, “Creating a scanned template” on page 71 to review the approach for

starting with a scanned form.