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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

What's favicon.ico ? favicon.ico is the small image that appears in the tabs of your browser, bookmarks and web history, even in your desktop when you save a shortcut to a specific website. You can see them in almost everywhere. Why should I have a favicon.ico ? favicon.ico gives to your visitors a good visual landmark and are generally welcome. They are small but very visible. Then, it's a good way to brand your website. What appens if I don't want to have a favicon.ico? When your visitors visit or bookmark your page, or have a look to their history, their browser will request for it and your server will send an error page 404. If you have customized errors pages with styles, images, etc. , it will be sent each time favicon.ico is requested even if nobody see it. However, If you plan to design your favicon.ico later on, you can simply put an empty file at the root of your web server, this way you'll avoid error messages and useless logs. But don't avoid it, it's worthy. How to create a favicon.ico? You can find many icon editors in google. I use icoFX, it's a very friendly user, complete and efficient tool that alouds picture importations, supports transparency, picture editions, texts with fonts, and gives many setting choices. Using the minimal settings(16x16 pixels in 2 colors), you may have a very acceptable favicon.ico's weighting arround 198 bytes. How to include it in your pages Once you feel happy enough with your new favicon.ico, just upload it at the root of 'yoursite.com', and add the following rows within your <head> tags to make it appear to the browser’s tabs: <link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" /> or with the absolute url: <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://yoursite.com/favicon.ico" /> That's all, enjoy it

I will say this, I think the author, Ph.D Susan Weinschenk is going easy on us the readers and in short web designers/developers as well, but the question is how does this relate to the web design/develop world? Well that is where it gets very interesting think of this book as 100 ways your life as a web designer/developer gets very difficult and requires a lot of planning and in a sense a descent size crew in developing websites and applications. That is of course if your starting from scratch in your designs and doesn't include anything already created to make life easier for you. Of course, it does help due to the fact that what has been designed already does cover a lot of what this books discusses, but like I said if your going to do something from scratch and your looking for a ultimate user experience for your websites or applications then this book is where you need to begin. For an example, #11 talks about a interesting fact about people and that is this, "Nine percent of men and one-half percent of women are color-blind" and to make this stat more interesting I did some calculations. I will note that numbers are not accurate whatsoever but a close approximation based on those numbers. I will use the world population and then go further use the numbers based on the numbers of males and females. An estimated 309,856,552 men are color-blind and and an estimated 16,932,549.3 women are colorblind and give it some sort of perspective, All of the US and and a small portion of Canada would be color blind. I would also like to point out there are billions of colors but if I remember my science correctly it deals with primary colors such as red, green, and blue. So how does #11 apply to design and development? Easy, accessibility, when designing a website or developing an application it is a fair chance that some of your users will be color blind and so how do you deal with slight problem? For one think grey-scale when developing a website because that is what a person will see when they are color blind, nothing but shades of grey. So you have to figure out how to cater to this small group but still be able to add color to your website. Best way based on my experience is Dark on light or light on dark layouts, use icons to help get the message across or even better yet provide a color blind option for a user to switch to. As you see just from reading that one "chapter" about know people I have become aware of what to think about when I am designing and this is especially important when UX comes into play. Just think 99 more things to think about when you read this book and yes it is something you need to think about because if you want to target a large audience this small group is part of it.

In this review I would talk about an interesting book in which can be best summed up in making your life as a developer and designer much easier. This book is called Simple and Usable: web, mobile, and interaction design. Now i like to point out that this book is not sure fire techniques to instantly make your life better but more of a where to begin and how to progress in making your life simpler. Another thing is this, this book is literally one of thousands that covers topics of organization, project management, web development and of course User Experience or UX. So this book covers a lot of different topics at once in one page summaries which I because you don't have to think about it. In which another book I have and enjoy called Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability is a great companion book to have and read. Another way you can look at this book is at the UX level, because it really gets down and dirty on to think about your users and how to plan your projects and designers around your user base and I will say this. User experience has become very huge in the last decade and for someone like me who has been in the web design business for almost 15 years, I have become more aware about the user experience thanks to the learning i have receive from my time in college. However, I would like to think if your just starting to design and you are worrying about the code then you have barely broken the ice in the web design/development world. Because there are so many different levels of progression a person has to go in order to build a website that it makes your life very difficult until you have a plan and that is where this book will give you a good start on where to begin. Of course, if your training in the UX side of things then ideally this book is good as a source of inspiration and something to read if your stuck or looking for that little push of improvement. So check this book out and who knows it might encourage you to become a better designer and developer and maybe a better person.