1102552 - [e10s] PDF files download rather than displaying in built-in PDF Viewer

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: PDF Viewer, defect)

Description

[Richard Barnes [:rbarnes]]

In Nightly 36.0a1 (2014-11-20), e10s appears to break PDF viewing.

STR:
1. Load a PDF that is supposed to display in the browser window, e.g., http://www.mathies.com/mozilla/pdf-test.pdf
2. Note that PDF document downloads rather than displaying

Expected: PDF should display in Firefox.

Comment 1

[Brendan Dahl [:bdahl]]

Are you able to reproduce with clean a clean profile?

Comment 2

[Richard Barnes [:rbarnes]]

No, this does not reproduce in a clean profile.  However, I'm not sure what about my profile would cause this sort of behavior.  Under Preferences > Applications, the setting for PDF is still "Preview in Nightly".

Comment 3

[Yury Delendik (:yury)]

(In reply to Richard Barnes [:rbarnes] from comment #2)
> No, this does not reproduce in a clean profile.  However, I'm not sure what
> about my profile would cause this sort of behavior.  Under Preferences >
> Applications, the setting for PDF is still "Preview in Nightly".

You can try disabling the addons and extensions to see which one is causing the issue.

Comment 4

[Yury Delendik (:yury)]

Richard, was you able to find out what (addon?) causes PDF to be downloaded instead of viewed?

Comment 5

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Yury: I think the problem is related to the "PDF Viewer 1.0.277" extension on AMO, not the PDF.js version bundled with Nightly 37: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pdfjs/

I have my Preferences > Applications set to PDF "Preview in Nightly", but when I click a pdf link (in this case the "Patterson’s technical paper reads a bit like a manifesto" link on http://www.eejournal.com/archives/articles/20141210-risc-v ), Nightly opens an empty new tab, downloads the pdf, and opens in in OS X's Preview.app.

When I click a pdf link in an e10s window, I see the following error message in the browser console:

> NS_ERROR_NOT_AVAILABLE: Async version must be used. nsHelperAppDlg.js:209:0

When I click a pdf link in a non-e10s window, I see the following error messages in the browser console:

> undefined events.js:79
> Error: operation not possible on dead CPOW <unknown>
> undefined events.js:79
> ReferenceError: PdfJsTelemetry is not defined PdfStreamConverter.jsm:903:4
> Error: operation not possible on dead CPOW <unknown>

Comment 6

[Yury Delendik (:yury)]

PDF.js extension and builtin PDF viewer are different products, and have two different release cycles. Currently PDF extension is not updated often. It's recommended to uninstall the extension, especially for non-release Firefox versions.

Comment 7

[Yury Delendik (:yury)]

The AMO version of the PDF.js extension was marked as incompatible with Firefox 35+ and was also downgraded to experimental. Closing bug as resolved.

Comment 8

[Dan D (volunteer tester from the community)]

I have this same issue, no addons installed, in Nightly 38. The bug is still happening for me exactly as rbarnes described. 

To be explicit: .pdf's open in a non-e10s window using pdf.js as built-in to the browser (no addon) just fine. In e10s windows, .pdf's simply download. pdf.js is a nifty thing, so I hope we can still use it in e10s. Therefore, I hope this bug is not ignored.

Thanks for your consideration.