PDF Forms Using Acrobat® and LiveCycle® Designer Bible

Chapter 3. Knowing Form Design Standards

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Getting familiar with forms standards

• Designing for the form recipient

• Understanding form design basics

Several efforts have been made by different governing bodies to create a set of standards for form elements and form designs. Having common form elements and overall design appearances makes it much easier for form recipients to understand your forms and easily fill them in.

Form design is an important consideration for a forms author. Where to place objects, text, and fields on a form and creating a visually appealing document is part of your form design process.

In this chapter, we look at some efforts made to bring a set of standards to forms designers and offer some basic rules to guide you in designing better forms.

Looking at Some Forms Standards

In a nutshell, no global standards have yet been adopted for designing forms. When you consider different industries such as real estate, law, banking, healthcare, and so on, each industry attempts to set its own standards. Add to the large industries various enterprises, small businesses, education, and government, and you find institutions wanting to set standards for their own unique reporting mechanisms.

Another factor influencing form design in recent times is the development of Web page design. We can deploy forms for print and online processing. Printed forms are designed for standard page sizes, while forms that never see a printer can be designed at an infinite number of page ...