A MESSAGE FROM THE CEO

I don't have any formal computer programming education or training. My skills are completely self-taught.

Although, I would like to acknowledge the assistance of www.google.com, www.acrobatusers.com, and www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat.html. Search, read, trial and error. That's how I did it.

"It" is to become a PDF javascript expert, according to a point system for answering forum questions at www.acrobatusers.com. I spent about ten years reading through the forums as I honed my skills while providing custom solutions for my many customers around the world. I saw a significant increase in my skills and knowledge when I starting giving back to the Acrobat user community by answering questions on the forum as I moved up from no rank to a top ten expert on the site within 2 years.

One of my favourite creations is the popup calendar or date picker. Acrobat does not come with this feature so I had to build it from scratch using javascript. There are a couple of free ones floating around the internet but I wasn't happy with their structure or performance. You get what you pay for.

There are also some that can be purchased but there were a few things I didn't like about them and thought I could improve on their design. I believe the date picker I developed is the best one on the market. It adds a popup calendar to any form field with a couple of mouse clicks and is the most popular search engine term that drives traffic to this site.

Another favourite is the custom menu item I developed that remembers the last folder you saved to when using the 'save as' function. This question came up a lot on the forums and the answer from other experts, whom I have great respect for, always answered that it was not possible so I am particularly proud of solving this problem. This tool can be downloaded free here.

I rarely answer forum questions any more as I'm very busy with other things, but I have been known to interact with members of this site and answer their "how to" questions. If I could learn all I did by reading forum questions and answers and searching Google, then you can too. I want to share my knowledge through this website and hopefully save you some of the stress I had to go through during those countless times when I was so close to the answer but didn't quite understand enough to make it across the finish line.

Beginning with next week's newsletter I will start including javascript tutorials, starting at the beginning with the very basics and moving toward the complex as I travel this journey. Will you join me? Since I have no formal computer programming education, I might not always use the correct terms, but I think that can be a good thing. I might also not provide the most technically accurate way of doing something but it will work. These tutorials will be used to build content for this website which you can access first by subscribing to our weekly newsletter. There's a free gift and a discount on the date picker just for signing up. Please join me on this journey by subscribing to our weekly newsletter or becoming a member of this site.

David Dagley, CFP®
CEO, Forms Doctor Inc.