874136 - navigation buttons on some PDFs do not appear when using Adobe Acrobat plugin

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 870216

(Plugins Graveyard :: PDF (Adobe), defect)

Description

[dusty-2011]

The navigation buttons of Adobe Reader (plug-in: Adobe Acrobat 11.0.3.37) do not appear on the following PDF in Firefox 21.0:

http://plus.turnpages.nl/DS/public/slot00001/pdf/compleet.pdf

The problem is that the navigation buttons are rendered where the taskbar is. On windows XP you can still see the upper part of the navigation buttons, but on windows 7 with its thicker tasbar the navigation buttons are not in sight at all (you can only see the top 2 lines of pixels or so). Also the scroll bar on the right side of the page continues below the Firefox window, into the taskbar. So when scrolling all the way to the bottom of the document, you will see that the bottom part of the scrollbar is not visible (you see the taskbar instead).

The navigation buttons are the buttons with which you can switch pages, zoom in and out, save the document to your hard drive, etc.

Switching to a different tab and then switching back makes the nagivation buttons appear. Also reducing window size makes them appear. Minimizing the window, and then opening it again also makes the navigation buttons appear. Other actions, like removing the add-on bar, can also cause the navigation buttons to appear. But these are temporary fixes. If you close Firefox completely, and revisit the page the navigation buttons will be gone again.

This problem is not present in Internet Explorer 9. In that browser, the navigation buttons are displayed correctly on this PDF.

Comment 1

[dusty-2011]

To verify this bug, you will have to have the Adobe Acrobat plugin installed, and have Firefox set to use this plugin instead of its native PDF viewer. See these instructions: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/view-pdf-files-firefox-without-downloading-them#w_using-a-pdf-reader-plugin

Comment 2

[Loic]

Did you test with a fresh profile?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles

Comment 3

[Maria Grazia Alastra [:mga]]

Confirmed on Windows 7, 64 bits, on Firefox 21.0 and with a clean profile.
User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:21.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/21.0, Build ID: 20130511120803.

Steps to reproduce:

1) Go to Options -> Applications and set the Adobe Acrobat plugin as predefined for the pdf format

2) Open any pdf file (i.e this one: http://www.sp.camcom.it/pdf/Istruzioni-PDF-A.pdf)

3) Perform any action (switch tabs, toggle toolbars on/off, focus on other windows and there come back again, etc)

Actual results:
At step 2 the buttons are not visible.
At step 3, after performing a random action the buttons are displayed. If Firefox is restarted steps 2 and 3 must be repeated in order to display the buttons.

Expected results:
The buttons should be displayable without performing any particular action such as tab switch, etc.

Comment 4

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

This sounds like bug 870216. Could someone check if this is fixed in Nightly?

Comment 5

[dusty-2011]

I would like to begin by stating that I could not reproduce this bug anymore in Firefox 21.0 for some reason. Even after restarting my browser, the pdf 
http://plus.turnpages.nl/DS/public/slot00001/pdf/compleet.pdf loaded just fine (the nagivation buttons loaded).

Then I tried clearing my History (I've cleared all items for all time), and now I can reproduce the bug again in Firefox 21.0. When I restart the browser, and visit http://plus.turnpages.nl/DS/public/slot00001/pdf/compleet.pdf the navigation buttons are missing.

Then I tried installing the latest Firefox Nightly (24.0a1). I've opened http://plus.turnpages.nl/DS/public/slot00001/pdf/compleet.pdf and the navigation buttons appeared. Then I tried deleting all my History (for all time), restarting the Nightly browser and visiting http://plus.turnpages.nl/DS/public/slot00001/pdf/compleet.pdf. The navigation buttons appeared. So it seems like the bug is fixed in Firefox 24.

Any chance this fix can get uplifted to Firefox 22? I want to be able to enjoy this fix as soon as possible.

Comment 6

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

Thanks for verifying this.

The fix got uplifted to Firefox 23, but per bug 870216, comment 14, this won't get to 22 due to the risk of introducing regressions.