Looking at the number of posts here, it is clear that LiveCycle Designer is a very popular application, though I am not sure whether Adobe senior management are aware of this fact.
Hardly surprising - little in the way of competition, and Adobe's own offerings - Acrobat XI and FormsCentral - just don't offer the same combination of ease of use and powerful form design features.
It is also clear that many, many people who are using LiveCycle Designer are not using it in connection with the LiveCycle server products - so cannot choose to render the form as Flash/HTML5 - they have to rely on the PDF format.
Why then is it so difficult for Adobe to produce a Reader on Mobile that supports Designer PDF forms? - as far as I can see, even if I save an ES3 form as a Static PDF, users are unable to complete it using the latest Adobe Reader on Android.
I'd actually say that non-server linked use of LiveCycle Designer has increased in the last couple of years - but this is not going to continue if there is no way to - easily - get the form usable in Adobe Reader on Mobile.
I don't think that Adobe realise that by seeding technology like this at the 'cubicle dweller' level (i.e. available to an individual geek/bright spark even if the company has not bought into the server technology) actually does often lead to the company making that 'big purchase'. In short, middle managers get to see some of the great work that Mike/Martha has been doing in his/her cubicle, and slowly but surely news of the efficiencies progress up the food chain until someone is convinced enough to sign off the big server purchase.
From past experience, Adobe have shown that they don't understand this way of marketing their technology - they seem to rely on glossy ads aimed at C level execs, ridiculously high entry-level prices and making these prices hard to even get hold of. Well, if that was such a bright idea, why have they made such slow progress with (and even scaled back) LiveCycle.
Some of the LiveCycle tech is really great - e.g. LC Rights Management and Barcoded Forms - and they should have gotten far more penetration out there. If Adobe want LiveCycle to thrive, they need to change their ways.
And if anyone has a solution for Designer PDF forms on mobile (even static ones), please share. Thanks
