Trent Shipley wrote:
> On Thursday 2004-12-23 12:00, Lee Einer wrote:
>
>
>>Not that I am aware of. In the case of the employer I was dealing with,
>>their form had to be signed and printed out anyway, so the PDF was a
>>reasonable replacement for the .doc file. A form which was to be
>>completed electronically would require a different solution. HTML,
>>perhaps?
>>
>
>
> Yes, for online HTML would be ideal.
>
> Using Word documents as forms is a path of least resistance. Virtually every
> office uses Word, and almost all private users. If you put up a Word form
> you can bet that something like 95%-plus of all users will be able to fill it
> out interactively and another 2% or so will be able to print hard-copy from
> their browser.
>
> Advantages of the *.doc interactive form:
>
> 1) We have Word, we have Word gurus, without additional training we can get to
> a prototype form in-house in 2-4 hours.
>
> 2) We can use the resulting file to produce hard-copy forms.
>
> 3) We can put the exact same form online and only an insignificant minority of
> users will be unable to access the form. The completed form can be returned
> online or printed by the user and returned as hard copy. Even if the form
> needs to be signed sophisticated users with scanners can return the form
> online (if the web builder allows for the option) or return the form as an
> email attachment.
>
> 4) The sophisticated office can accept online Word forms and automatically
> extract the values of the form's fields. Unfortunately, this will require
> the assistance of someone with IT expertise.
>
> WHAT A GREAT VALUE. Cheap to create, then you can use it everywhere, and
> everyone (Windows and Mac users) can access the results. In the worst case,
> a customer can request a faxed or snail mailed hard copy.
I wouldn't completely agree with this last point. I had to support Office on
OSX and Windows and there were a number of files (word, excel, powerpoint) that
would open fine on the PC version, but not the Mac and vice versa. This was
with Office 2003 for Mac and Office XP for the PCs. And this was for internal
stuff like documentation, travel expense sheets, etc...
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