Does LiveCycle Designer ES2 support developer plugins?

[Ennis_Ray_Lynch]

Do the Designer products themselves support writing custom plugins through some SDK or API? Similar in nature to writing a custom plugin for Photoshop, allowing a custom user interface that can fully interact with the current document? I see a lot of information on the Internet about the ability the ability to do plugins and other custom functions for LiveCycle but not LiveCycle designer.

Any information on this would be appreciated.

[Niall_O_Donovan]

Hi,

Not sure if I got you post right, but I suspect that there are several plugins available for the enterprise suite of LiveCycle (for example www.avoka.com). However I am not aware of specific plugins for Designer that affect the UI for the users.

John Brinkman has a blog on the new ability for developers to set up macros for Designer. However this is a new feature and not fully supported. In addition you would need LC Designer ES2 (v 9). See http://blogs.adobe.com/formfeed/2010/01/designer_es2_macros.html

Windjack Solutions www.windjack.com have several plugins for Acrobat. Some of these can be used to create custom buttons and dialogs. These are developed in Acrobat, but the javascript can then be used directly in LC Designer. These give your users a custom look and feel. AcroDialogs is a particular favourite.

Good luck,

Niall

[Ennis_Ray_Lynch]

Macro's sound like what I need, unfortunately it is experimental (prototype) or most likely unsupportable so I don't know if I will be able to use it. Do you know if the SWF scripts run in a restricted sandbox? It would be nice to be able to call web services and such but John's blog does make some mention of features being restricted for security concerns.

Anyway, thanks for your answer it definitely points me in another direction. If you don't mind, I am not going to award any points yet in hopes of finding a supported solution.

[Niall_O_Donovan]

Hi,

Not at all!! ;-)

I don't think the macros are running in a sandbox, the main mechanism is the .js javascript file, which is running within LC Designer. The swf is just like a 'container' for user/developer interaction.  While you can set up web service call from within LC Designer (to be called at runtime) I am not sure if you can call a web service from within the design environment/macro.

You could try posting a comment to John's blog. He is always responsive and much, much better placed to give you a direction on this.

Good luck,

Niall