Editing an XFA form on an iPhone

Well sort of anyway! We are using the new Parallels Desktop 6 for Mac, which includes a cool feature where you have full access to your virtual machine via a free iPhone app.

We use Parallels Desktop 6 for Mac to run Windows 7 – the principal reason being to run LiveCycle Designer ES2.

The free Parallels Mobile app is available here.

The interface is fairly clean and allows the full use of the screen for LC Designer ES2. On the iPhone, editing of a complex form would not be comfortable. However using LC Designer ES2 on the iPad it would be wholly possible.

The one big drawback is that the VM interface does not appear to allow dragging, so you will be limited to nudging objects into position using the arrow keys. Apart from that all other functionality in LC Designer ES2 is available on the iPhone. You can click/double click, access the Script Editor, hierarchy and palettes. You can also drag new objects onto the page.

Using the app over the wi-fi- network is reasonably responsive, with only a small time lag.

Most of the time I am no more than 10 feet away from the laptop, so the app may be of limited use. I have tested it on a 3G data connection and it performed well, so it will be interesting to test a real-life scenario the next time I am away from the office.