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The complexity of a form significantly
influences the amount of time it takes Adobe Reader to render or
reender the document. You can measure the complexity in several
ways, but a main factor is the number of visible form objects. Even
a complex form design with many objects, subforms, and pages can
perform well if a limited part of its complexity is visible at once.
It can perform well because the objects that have a presence set
to hidden are ignored, and no time is spent to position and render
them.
Keep in mind the following points when creating forms with a
flowable layout:
GeneralReduce the overall complexity the form design:
Use field captions instead of static text objects.
Remove captions form a field when not required.
Specify borders instead of drawing lines.
Specify a subform margin instead of using objects to add
spacing between subforms.
Remove duplicate objects, scripts, or constructs that you
can replace with fragments, script objects, and global fields.
Use either explicit or implicit breaks:
With
implicit pagination, the master pages are instantiated in the order
they are listed in the hierarchy, based on their minimum and maximum
occurrences.
Explicit breaks are allowed and often required for complex
forms, but are not necessary to create complex forms.
Start with the layout, ant then add the dynamic behaviors
and scripting.
Use fixed layout when possible; for example, when a container
such as a subform has one child.
Use fixed size objects when possible.
Resize the content area to leave enough space on the page
for other objects that you do not want overlaid (for example, a
page number, title, logo, and so on). Watermarks are meant to be
overlapped content.
For a column layout, consider using multiple content areas
or tables. To flow content from one column to the other, use content
areas. To align the content of each column side by side, use a table.
Create the table without a header and footer row.
SubformsAvoid placing flowed subforms inside a positioned subform.
Doing so causes problems with page breaks, overlapping objects,
and repeating subforms.
If a subform contains objects that merge with data of varying
sizes, verify that the objects do not expand and overrun the area
that another object occupies. Expandable objects, such as text fields,
may render on top of other objects. Set the subform to flow and
expand to fit the content.
When you create a subform, resize it so that its width is
the same as the width of the content area. Resize the subform before
you place objects in it. This way, you avoid having to reposition
the subform's children after you resize the subform.
Always set up overflow leader and trailer subforms to Positioned
content and deselect the Allow Page Breaks option. Otherwise, the
rendered form may contain errors such as duplicate headers or overlapping
fields.
Specify an overflow leader and trailer subform for subforms
that break between pages.
To quickly resize a subform to fit around its children, select
the Autofit option in the Layout palette and then disable it.
It is good practice to rename nameless subforms with unique
names. Naming subforms makes scripting easier and helps you locate
objects in the Hierarchical view. A nameless subform does not participate
in the data merge. To achieve the same result with a named subform,
set its binding type to None.
Note: If you create a large interactive PDF form with no structure, end users may experience slow performance when tabbing between fields. This problem is averted if you save the form without tagging. However, if you need your form to be accessible. However, to make your form accessible, save it as tagged PDF. To work around this situation, wrap sections of the form in unnamed subforms. This task adds the required structure to the form.
You can have several content areas on a master page. The
content areas are filled with content in the order they are listed
in the Hierarchy view regardless of their position on the page.
If you are creating a compliant form, use Acrobat to compare
the documents. Select Compare Documents from the Acrobat Advanced
menu.
Setting the margins of a subform may generate unexpected
results. Most subforms have positioned content and therefore a fixed
height. Adding margins offsets the subform content and can cause
the objects below it to overlap.
To wrap the content of a subform exactly, without using the
Expand To Fit option, resize the subform by using the properties
in the Layout palette. The sample forms that are included with Designer
use both methods.
ScriptingWhen scripting, avoid placing code in the initialize event
of objects on the master page. In earlier versions of Adobe Reader,
the initialize events for objects on master pages are executed more
often than necessary. This extra script execution affects the performance
of the form. If possible, use a different event, such as the calculate
event.
Data bindingIf you have a data connection, bind objects
to the data connection or set the binding type to None. Also, use
relative binding referencess. Do not have reoccurring data that
is not bound to reoccurring subforms. It is best to bind fields
to a data element and bind subforms to a data group. Data groups
and subforms can repeat.
By default, the subform binding type is set to Use Name.
When working with a schema, it is preferable that you set the default
binding type to No Data Binding. You can set the default data binding
in Tools > Options > Data Binding.
Set the data binding to No Data Binding for objects you do
not want exported in the data. Set the binding type of subforms
that contain no fields to No Data Binding. For example, an overflow
leader or trailer subform usually has no fields. Setting the binding
type to No Data Binding prevents it from participating in the merge.
Excluding the overflow leader or trailer from the merge can improve
performance.
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