224429 - Mozilla won't launch Adobe Acrobat Reader

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[Stephen Rasku]

User-Agent:       
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6a) Gecko/20031030

Adobe Acrobat Reader is not detected when I fill in the form at
http://www.bclc.com/app/SportsAction/Toto/Home.asp

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Fill in a menu.
2. Press "Hot Sheet".

Actual Results:  
The following dialog box is displayed:

	You need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed to use this feature.  If 
	you don't have this software on your system, visit www.adobe.com


Expected Results:  
It should load Acrobat Reader to display the resulting page.

Acrobat reader is installed and it works properly on IE 6.0.

Comment 1

[Stephen Rasku]

*** Bug 224428 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 2

[Jo Hermans]

This page checks the navigator.mimeTypes array to see if a 'application/pdf'
mime-type is installed by the plugin. Reporter, do you have the plugin
installed, or do you have it installed as a helper application ?

See http://gemal.dk/browserspy/mimetypes.html (list of mime-types) and
http://gemal.dk/browserspy/acrobat.html (checks directly for the plugin).

Comment 3

[Jo Hermans]

It seems that the following code is the problem :
<script LANGUAGE="Javascript">
<!--
if (navigator.mimeTypes && navigator.mimeTypes.length)
{
	x = navigator.mimeTypes['application/pdf'];
	if (x && x.enabledPlugin)
		acrobatInstalled = true;
}	
//-->
</SCRIPT>

That will detect the 'application/pdf' mimetype, but only when it's installed as
a plugin. When it's a Helper Application (see Preferences -> Navigator -> Helper
Application), enabledPlugin is false, so the script refuses your access.

Reporter, this website tries to detect the Acrobat plugin, not the reader,
despite their message in the dialog box. Can you confirm that you don't have a
plugin ? Then it's not a Mozilla bug. You can always try to convince the
webmaster to change this code, so that you both Acrobat plugins and Acrobat
Readers will work.

Comment 4

[Stephen Rasku]

Going to "Edit | Preferences | Navigator | Helper Applications" doesn't display
any helper applications at all.  However, when entering "about: plugins" in the
location bar, I get the following information.  Doesn't this mean that the
plugin is installed?

Adobe Acrobat

    File name: nppdf32.dll
    Adobe Acrobat Plug-In Version 6.00 for Netscape

MIME Type 	Description 	Suffixes 	Enabled
application/pdf 	Acrobat Portable Document Format 	pdf 	Yes
application/vnd.fdf 	Acrobat Forms Data Format 	fdf 	Yes
application/vnd.adobe.xfdf 	XML Version of Acrobat Forms Data Format 	xfdf 	Yes
application/vnd.adobe.xdp+xml 	Acrobat XML Data Package 	xdp 	Yes
application/vnd.adobe.xfd+xml 	Adobe FormFlow99 Data File 	xfd 	Yes

Comment 5

[Jo Hermans]

Attachment: test-case

Reporter, what do you see on this test-page ?

- at the top, you should see a message if the application/pdf is installed or
not (and if it's a plugin or not)
- at the bottom, you'll see the entire list of mimetypes that are publically
visible. The one from the plugin will be visible, but the one from a helper
application might not be (although it can be queried directly, as used in the
first test). 

Note that an application/pdf type might be provided by the OS too, not only by
a plugin or helper application. That's what I'm seeing at my Mac at this moment
" : the test-page reports "pdf installed / plugin not installed" (so I can't
click on the link of the website either), although I haven't installed or
configured anything at all.

Comment 6

[Stephen Rasku]

Clicking on the attachment link gives:

	test for mimetype

	pdf installed
	plugin installed

1	application/pdf	Acrobat Portable Document Format	pdf 	Adobe Acrobat
2	application/vnd.fdf	Acrobat Forms Data Format	fdf 	Adobe Acrobat
3	application/vnd.adobe.xfdf	XML Version of Acrobat Forms Data Format	xfdf 
Adobe Acrobat
4	application/vnd.adobe.xdp+xml	Acrobat XML Data Package	xdp 	Adobe Acrobat
5	application/vnd.adobe.xfd+xml	Adobe FormFlow99 Data File	xfd

(plus more non-Acrobat related plugins)

Comment 7

[Kent Paul Dolan]

I am duplicating this bug and having similar failures using Adobe Acrobat 6.0
to access http://tinyurl.com/z5wa ; sometimes the PDF file fails to open, other
times it opens but the page displaying the PDF document cannot then access
another URL.  In both cases Mozilla is frozen, and must be killed from the
operating system.  In each case I have tested, the Adobe Acrobat was at least
the second Mozilla window in use.

Environment: MS-Windows 98 SE
RAM        : 128 Meg.
Hardware   : Custom made by computer store.
Build      : Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.6b) Gecko/2003120808

This is a very tender setup, so normally I'd attribute the problem to my OS
or hardware, but since others are seeing the bug, I thought I'd chime in
with news of another sighting.

I think this bug should be upgraded from "normal", since it crashes Mozilla
repeatably.

This same Adobe Acrobat download also caused failures in Stable Release 1.4.
In each case, download and display of the PDF file occasionally succeeds, as
well.

Comment 8

[Erik Postma]

I'm seeing this too, on a rather different platform. I'm running Firebird 0.7
(if this means I should not be adding comments here, feel free to flame) on
Linux. It's installed in /usr/lib/mozilla-1.5; /usr/lib/mozilla-1.5/plugins
contains nppdf.so and acroread is in my path.

What happens if I try to open a PDF file is Firebird looks up the server, then
happily displays a blank page and says it's 'Done.' If I subsequently save the
page as something-or-other.pdf, a download box pops up and it slowly starts
downloading the file -- does this mean that it doesn't even download the file?

I tried the three test pages in the other comments; here's what they say:

The first one says I'm OK:

 Portable Document Format
 application/pdf 	pdf

The second one says I'm not OK:

 Adobe Reader installed 	No or unable to detect...
 Acrobat Reader components 	Acrobat Reader not installed.

Finally the attachment says I'm OK again:

 test for mimetype
 pdf installed
 plugin installed

 array :
 i	type	description	suffixes	enabledPlugin.name
 0	application/pdf	Portable Document Format	pdf 	nppdf.so

In all three I cut out the stuff that's not related.

Comment 9

[Craig Donnelly]

When-ever I click on a PDF download file in Mozilla, Adobe Acrobat 6.0 launches,
but does not display the file and Mozilla crashes.

Comment 10

[Jeff D. Hanson]

WFM:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040608
Acrobat Reader 6.0.2

Comment 11

[Stephen Rasku]

WFM for Mozilla 1.7b.