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Before I begin, I am a huge Sitepoint fan, love their books as I have developed a great collection of their books. More importantly they are great read that provide the right balance of technicality and easy reason. Wish I did work for them because they are that good. Now that my fanboyism is out of the way about the publisher, let’s talk about “Photoshop CS6 Unlocked” 101 Tips, Tricks, and Techniques” by Corrie Haffley. First thing I want to point out this this is the second edition of this book as this Adobe Photoshop book deals with getting the most out of Photoshop CS6. Even better, I own one of the Adobe CS6 suites and so this book has scored more points! Of course, I will point out and for those that do not know me; I am a pretty crappy graphic designer. I can handle my own in the sense I can attempt to make things look pretty and have an eye for what looks good and what doesn’t, but other than that, I am last person to hire or use for a million dollar project. However, with this book it provides me a guide to help learn basic techniques and spruce them up a bit and like every great designer you need to master the basics to become a better artist. Naturally, 101 tips, tricks, and techniques is not enough to get the most out of Photoshop because we all know this software is hundreds of features with thousands of different possibilities. As for who can use this book, I have to everyone, not because I am huge Sitepoint fan or Photoshop person but these 101 tips, tricks, and techniques attack all three levels of skill and patience because it uses tools like the Convert Point tool, feathering, masking etc. and I know that people spend months making complex designs in Photoshop. However, if you are looking to spruce up your photos or website, Photoshop does it as well. More importantly, it is a much bigger book in terms of size as it gave the author plenty of room to show clearly how the tips work and walking you through them. Or if you’re a Sitepoint junkie like me, I would pick it up, granted the book has purpose for me since I do have the software. On top of that you learn a lot and it refreshes your skills if you have been out of the graphic design game for a bit or don’t want to hire an expensive graphic designer.

In this tutorial, we will create a drop down menu that when a specific item is selected will result in an text field to be open and be fillable. So, let us open up LiveCycle and begin the fun. With a new document open or you want to add this to an existing form we will first add our drop down menu by going to the Object Library and select Drop-down List. For tutorial sakes, we will have only four items and they are listed as such (Item 1, Item 2, Item 3, Other). To add items to your Drop-down list, highlight your Drop-down menu and click on the Object tab and then click on the + icon and your menu items. To make sure our items are appearing correctly, hit the Preview PDF tab and click on the drop down and your items will appear. Let us head back to Design View and add in our Subform and editable text field. To add the Subform, go to Insert > Standard > Subform or select it from the Object Library, then place it next to the drop-down menu and resize it to fit your text field. Now, head back into the Object Library and grab a Text Field then place it with in the Subform. To prepare ourselves to build our two Actions, select the Subform and set its Presence to Invisible. Now to build our Action, head over to Tools > Action Builder then click New Action and then do the following: In the Condition field, select your Drop-down List Select "Text Selected" and choose your “Other” option. In the Result Field, select Show or Hide Object Click object then select your Subform, and set it to Visible However, we are not done yet, what if someone chooses another option, we just can’t keep the Subform there and so we must create a new Action. After clicking the new Action we then do the following, In the Condition Field, you want to list all the options and set them to "Text Selected" for Item 1, Item 2, and Item 3 and then change the Relationship of the Condition from and to or and so regardless what option they pick the Subform will disappear. Then in the Result Field select Show or Hide Object then click the object link and set it to Invisible this time. Hit ok and now to test our Drop-down Menu. If you followed along in this tutorial and the screenshots provided you should have something like the PDF that is attached to this tutorial you will have a more dynamic form. However, I will point out that when I was writing up this tutorial, there is a much quicker solution. When you select your Drop-Down Menu and open the Object Pane, you will notice the Allow Custom Text Entry option. With this select, all the user has to do is type within the drop down and it will be accepted. While this is perfectly acceptable, you will have to mention somewhere in your document that you can type into the drop-down. Of course, with form design the way it is, it wouldn't make much sense to make the drop-down editable like that. Also, you can use this very same tutorial if you are using a List Box and not a Drop-Down. So, there you go, you now know how to make a more custom Drop-Down Menu in your LiveCycle PDF form. demo.pdf

In this tutorial I will expand a little bit more with actions based on my last tutorial. In this one, I will set up a series of check boxes in which a specific action will happen when a user clicks 1, 2, or 3 check boxes and when all three check boxes are selected something else happens. The first step is to populate the form with the five check boxes with three being the options and the two check boxes that will be used as the results when certain conditions are met. If you followed the last tutorial, your next step is to open up the Action Builder and you can either select it from right clicking one of the checkboxes and select Action or click Tools at the top menu and selection Action Builder. Once there, you are going to do the following: Add two Check box #1 Add two Check box #2 Add one Check box #3 Now you will set the following conditions: Check box #1 will have Is Checked and Is Unchecked Check box #2 will have Is Checked and Is Unchecked Check box #3 will have Is Unchecked If you notice there are all linked together, and you see the word “and” in the link this means that if you were to run this as is, you will have a whole mess of problems such as the results check boxes being checked off. So, you want to click on the word “and” and switch it to an “or” and this way if it meets certain conditions then one of two results will happen. Next, we will set up our results, which are what will happen to the other two check boxes when the specific conditions are met based on what check boxes have been checked off. In the result column, select from the drop down, choose Select Value to Field and select the fourth check box to be checked. However, to prevent both check boxes from being checked, you need to add a second result and for the fifth check box you need to select unchecked. If you click the Preview PDF tab and went and checked all three boxes you will notice they are all keep pointing to the fifth box, however, we want it to switch to the forth check box when all three are checked and so we need to set up another Action in order to achieve the desired effect. So, head back over to the Design View Tab, then go to Action Builder once again and create a New Action and to do that click the New Action Icon next to the trashcan and then do the following. Condition (keep the condition link to “and”) Checkbox1 is set to Checked Checkbox2 is set to Checked Checkbox2 is set to Checked Result Set Value of Checkbox4 to checked Set Value of Checkbox5 to unchecked Hit ok and now its test time. Click on Preview PDF, and check of checkboxes 1 and 2 and the 5th box should still be checked. Now click checkbox three and it should now switch to checkbox 4. Then, uncheck either checkbox one or two or checkbox 5 should be checked off again. So there go, you just now created a more complex action that can be used in any form you plan on doing that has something like this. Attached to this tutorial is a live demo of the PDF you just created for comparison needs and thank you for reading this tutorial and checkout for future LiveCycle tutorials by me. tutorial2demo.pdf

To make the guide simple enough. I will have 4 checkboxes and number them 1, 2, 3, 4 Next, you add in a subform by going to Insert > Standard > Subform. For tutorial sakes and testing purposes I will put in a blank textbox to make sure the process is working correctly. Now, make sure you have the subform selected and in the object window, click on the subform tab and then Presence. In the drop down select invisable and this will make your subform invisable in the PDF. The next step is to select your check boxes to make the sub form disappear. We will use Checkbox 1 and Checkbox 3 as the two checkboxes that will make the subform visable again and so right click on Check box 1 and section Actions. In the condition column set your Checkbox to Is Checked and then hit the plus sign to add another object. Now click on the object link and select Checkbox 3 and select Is Checked. You will now notice that they are linked which means you to have both of them checked in order for the subform to appear. In the result column select Show or Hide Object and then click on the object link again and this time select the Subform as the object. In the dropdown, select visable. Hit ok and now it is test time. Hit the Preview PDF tab and it will open up your PDF and click on Checkbox 1, nothing should happen, now click on Checkbox 3 and your subform will appear along with the text field that is inside. Now to make the subform invisable again, right click on Checkbox 1 and select Actions. This time we are going to create a new action and so click on the Icon next to the trashcan. Now add Checkbox 1 and 3 into the condition fields and selected unchecked. Now you will notice on the rink the link and it says and on it, click it and it will change to or. This means if the user uncheckes either Checkbox 1 or 3 the subform will disappear.