PDF Mystery

[W. eWatson]

I use Firefox.

This is odd. For possibly months, each time I used Google to search, and
got a pdf that I decided to select, I could press F8 and a banner would
appear with icons to print, move to another page, etc. Otherwise, it
didn't allow me to search unless I pressed Cntrl-F. Maybe three weeks
ago, I couldn't even search. This morning I decided to reboot, but not
thinking about pdfs. Now I can get a different display of the pdf, and I
can search it using Ctrl-F. The controls look different, but that's not
a problem, nor is the find. I'm curious how this might happen.
Comments? Aren't such PDF readers in this instance provided by Adobe
Acrobat?

This should
<http://genesismission.jpl.nasa.gov/educate/scimodule/Cosmogony/CosmogonyPDF/DensityGravityST.pdf>
show the new layout. It has a gray background, a set of icons to the
right, center and left.

 

[Paul in Houston TX]

I use Firefox.

This is odd. For possibly months, each time I used Google to search, and
got a pdf that I decided to select, I could press F8 and a banner would
appear with icons to print, move to another page, etc. Otherwise, it
didn't allow me to search unless I pressed Cntrl-F. Maybe three weeks
ago, I couldn't even search. This morning I decided to reboot, but not
thinking about pdfs. Now I can get a different display of the pdf, and I
can search it using Ctrl-F. The controls look different, but that's not
a problem, nor is the find. I'm curious how this might happen.
Comments? Aren't such PDF readers in this instance provided by Adobe
Acrobat?

This should
<http://genesismission.jpl.nasa.gov/educate/scimodule/Cosmogony/CosmogonyPDF/DensityGravityST.pdf>
show the new layout. It has a gray background, a set of icons to the
right, center and left.

Adobe is phone home bloatware.
I use Foxit and it works quite well.
No gray and no icons.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

Adobe is phone home bloatware.
I use Foxit and it works quite well.
No gray and no icons.

One of the recent changes to Firefox was the incorporation of a built-in
PDF viewer. Assuming you've let Firefox self-update and have things at
the default settings, then when you click on a .pdf, you're no longer
using Adobe or Foxit, unless you know otherwise - so it's probably not a
Windows 7 problem. (The best 'group is probably mozilla.support.firefox
- available free from the server news.mozilla.com, and also carried by
free.teranews.com .)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a
profound truth may well be another profound truth. -Niels Bohr, physicist
(1885-1962)

 

[Paul]

One of the recent changes to Firefox was the incorporation of a built-in
PDF viewer. Assuming you've let Firefox self-update and have things at
the default settings, then when you click on a .pdf, you're no longer
using Adobe or Foxit, unless you know otherwise - so it's probably not a
Windows 7 problem. (The best 'group is probably mozilla.support.firefox
- available free from the server news.mozilla.com, and also carried by
free.teranews.com .)

Wow. What a crazy thing to do. I guess they were bored.

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/disable-built-pdf-viewer-and-use-another-viewer

I wonder if Adobe staff will contribute patches to their code base ?

Paul

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

W. eWatson wrote:
I use Firefox.
This is odd. For possibly months, each time I used Google to
search, and got a pdf that I decided to select, I could press F8
and a banner would appear with icons to print, move to another
page, etc. Otherwise, it didn't allow me to search unless I
pressed Cntrl-F. Maybe three weeks ago, I couldn't even search.
This morning I decided to reboot, but not thinking about pdfs. Now []
Adobe is phone home bloatware.
I use Foxit and it works quite well.
No gray and no icons.

One of the recent changes to Firefox was the incorporation of a
built-in PDF viewer. Assuming you've let Firefox self-update and have

[]
Wow. What a crazy thing to do. I guess they were bored.[/QUOTE]

Why crazy? The view of Paul that Adobe is rather big (and with a
tendency to 'phone home as well) is quite widespread, and also the
mozilla folk do rather embrace the open-source philosophy rather more
than Adobe seem to, so I can see their desire to get away from Adobe;
whether they then just go for Foxit or one of the other alternatives, or
make their own, was obviously up to them, and I'm not surprised they
decided to go their own way. (I'd guess they have/had a history of bugs
- things people wanted to do when viewing .pdfs via the browser - that
could probably all [or many] be solved at one go by rolling their own
rather than using a third party's solution.)

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/disable-built-pdf-viewer-and-use-ano
ther-viewer

I wonder if Adobe staff will contribute patches to their code base ?

Paul

And Foxit staff, and ...

 

[Bob Henson]

In message <[email protected]>, Paul in Houston TX
W. eWatson wrote:
I use Firefox.
This is odd. For possibly months, each time I used Google to
search, and got a pdf that I decided to select, I could press F8
and a banner would appear with icons to print, move to another
page, etc. Otherwise, it didn't allow me to search unless I
pressed Cntrl-F. Maybe three weeks ago, I couldn't even search.
This morning I decided to reboot, but not thinking about pdfs. Now []
Adobe is phone home bloatware.
I use Foxit and it works quite well.
No gray and no icons.
One of the recent changes to Firefox was the incorporation of a
built-in PDF viewer. Assuming you've let Firefox self-update and have

[]
Wow. What a crazy thing to do. I guess they were bored.

Why crazy? The view of Paul that Adobe is rather big (and with a
tendency to 'phone home as well) is quite widespread, and also the
mozilla folk do rather embrace the open-source philosophy rather more
than Adobe seem to, so I can see their desire to get away from Adobe;
whether they then just go for Foxit or one of the other alternatives, or
make their own, was obviously up to them, and I'm not surprised they
decided to go their own way. (I'd guess they have/had a history of bugs
- things people wanted to do when viewing .pdfs via the browser - that
could probably all [or many] be solved at one go by rolling their own
rather than using a third party's solution.)

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/disable-built-pdf-viewer-and-use-ano
ther-viewer

I wonder if Adobe staff will contribute patches to their code base ?

Paul

And Foxit staff, and ...
[/QUOTE]

I haven't got the .pdf viewer in my main system yet as I use the ESR
version of Firefox and Thunderbird to avoid the "every five minutes"
changes like this. However, I have tried the later versions and like
you, I don't think it's crazy at all - this is one of their unexpected
additions that I actually like (and will enjoy in about six months time
when V.24ESR comes out). It is quite a lot faster than Adobe and even
PDF-Xchange that I use, and should be quite a bit safer than Adobe
software.

However, there is one snag to leaving it enabled - some sites actually
need Acrobat and will work with nothing else. The Royal Mail site which
enables one to print one's own postage labels will only work with Adobe
- anything else, and the formatting is screwed. My other half gets .pdfs
from work which will only open in Adobe, too.

On balance though, I'm quite looking forward to it, so long as their
interpretation will handle the variations in the format that are out there.

 

[Paul]

Wow. What a crazy thing to do. I guess they were bored.

Why crazy? The view of Paul that Adobe is rather big (and with a
tendency to 'phone home as well) is quite widespread, and also the
mozilla folk do rather embrace the open-source philosophy rather more
than Adobe seem to, so I can see their desire to get away from Adobe;
whether they then just go for Foxit or one of the other alternatives, or
make their own, was obviously up to them, and I'm not surprised they
decided to go their own way. (I'd guess they have/had a history of bugs
- things people wanted to do when viewing .pdfs via the browser - that
could probably all [or many] be solved at one go by rolling their own
rather than using a third party's solution.)

Crazy in that:

1) PDF is not an open standard. But the specification is published.
The feature set changes with time. Stuff gets added to it, like
encryption or security features. Ghostscript chases the changes for
example. If you write your own plugin, you "own it". If you
instead, convince others to write the plugin, you just
blacklist them if they cause a problem.

2) Will they do a good job on the security issues ?
And conversely, will they support any interactive features
that might exist in a PDF (Javascript based) ?

That's why it's a bit crazy.

After all, if you look at how they support printing in Firefox,
you'd probably gag (the first versions with Cairo). How could
people who did that, write a PDF plugin ?

If I had that version of Firefox, I would:

1) Turn off the built-in PDF viewer.
2) Set application preference to "Save As" (as mine
is currently set anyway).
3) Wait several releases for the PDF viewer to stabilize.
If there are no complaints about it, then consider
turning it on.

I view software development organizations, by the quality
of what they release. The change to the printing architecture
in Firefox, was released half-finished. That does not inspire
confidence. Instead, it reminds me of the approach of Corel
when releasing CorelDraw. The new feature they added, the
one that convinced me to buy CorelDraw, it crashed
on my very first attempt to use it for serious work.

It's one thing to have alpha/beta/release, where a feature is
completely implemented. We understand the exposures with that.
It's quite another to have alpha/beta/release, where the implementation
is half finished, and delivered on a "catch you later" basis.
Now, where does that Mozilla PDF plugin fall ? Is it a
"catch you later" design, or is it finished ?

I use the same "track record" mechanism, with Windows Update.
Why don't I take Windows Updates, immediately on Patch Tuesday.
Reason - track record...

HTH,
Paul

 

[Steve Hayes]

I use Firefox.

This is odd. For possibly months, each time I used Google to search, and
got a pdf that I decided to select, I could press F8 and a banner would
appear with icons to print, move to another page, etc. Otherwise, it
didn't allow me to search unless I pressed Cntrl-F. Maybe three weeks
ago, I couldn't even search. This morning I decided to reboot, but not
thinking about pdfs. Now I can get a different display of the pdf, and I
can search it using Ctrl-F. The controls look different, but that's not
a problem, nor is the find. I'm curious how this might happen.
Comments? Aren't such PDF readers in this instance provided by Adobe
Acrobat?

Yes, i have the same problem.

Also with Firefox, and Firefox also seems to have made some changes that it
doesn't show you that it is downloading sometrhing.

I downloaded five copies of the same file recently because I didn't think it
was downloading properly, and Firefox gave no indication.

This should
<http://genesismission.jpl.nasa.gov/educate/scimodule/Cosmogony/CosmogonyPDF/DensityGravityST.pdf>
show the new layout. It has a gray background, a set of icons to the
right, center and left.

And when a PDF file displays like that, how do you8 save it?

 

[John K.Eason]

Also with Firefox, and Firefox also seems to have made some changes
that it
doesn't show you that it is downloading sometrhing.

I downloaded five copies of the same file recently because I didn't
think it
was downloading properly, and Firefox gave no indication.

Click the down arrow to the right of the address bar and you'll see a list of
recent downloads. That arrow will be green if a file has been downloaded but not
viewed, or grey otherwise. Click the folder icon to the right of an entry on the
dialog that appears and it will open Windows Explorer with the downloaded file
hilighted.

mogonyPDF/DensityGravityST.pdf> >show the new layout. It has a gray
background, a set of icons to the >right, center and left.

And when a PDF file displays like that, how do you8 save it?

Click the icon with the down arrow on a page symbol in the PDF toolbar. It's one
icon in from the right-hand side next to the print icon and the tooltip for it says
'Download'!

Regards
John ([email protected]) Remove the obvious to reply...

 

[Ken Blake]

I use Firefox.

This is odd. For possibly months, each time I used Google to search, and
got a pdf that I decided to select, I could press F8 and a banner would
appear with icons to print, move to another page, etc. Otherwise, it
didn't allow me to search unless I pressed Cntrl-F. Maybe three weeks
ago, I couldn't even search. This morning I decided to reboot, but not
thinking about pdfs. Now I can get a different display of the pdf, and I
can search it using Ctrl-F. The controls look different, but that's not
a problem, nor is the find. I'm curious how this might happen.
Comments? Aren't such PDF readers in this instance provided by Adobe
Acrobat?

I know very little about Firefox, and can't help with it, but let me
make a couple of comments about your last sentence

1. Adobe Acrobat is a program that Adobe offers for sale. It gives you
the ability to do two things: create PDF files and read PDF files.

2. The most commonly-used program to read PDF files is the free Adobe
Reader, *not* Adobe Acrobat. It can only read, and not create, PDF
files.

3. Despite the popularity of Adobe Reader, in my view the best such
program is the free Foxit Reader.

 

[Steve Hayes]

Click the down arrow to the right of the address bar and you'll see a list of
recent downloads. That arrow will be green if a file has been downloaded but not
viewed, or grey otherwise. Click the folder icon to the right of an entry on the
dialog that appears and it will open Windows Explorer with the downloaded file
hilighted.

Thanks, but is there anything to indicate that it is actually downloading, or
that it has finished downloading?

Click the icon with the down arrow on a page symbol in the PDF toolbar. It's one
icon in from the right-hand side next to the print icon and the tooltip for it says
'Download'!

Does that mean I have to download it twice?

Why can't I just save the one already downloaded that is displayed on the
screen?

Is there any way of reverting to an earlier version of Firefox that doesn't
have these disimprovements?

 

[Mellowed]

I know very little about Firefox, and can't help with it, but let me
make a couple of comments about your last sentence

1. Adobe Acrobat is a program that Adobe offers for sale. It gives you
the ability to do two things: create PDF files and read PDF files.

2. The most commonly-used program to read PDF files is the free Adobe
Reader, *not* Adobe Acrobat. It can only read, and not create, PDF
files.

3. Despite the popularity of Adobe Reader, in my view the best such
program is the free Foxit Reader.

+1

 

[Ken Springer]

3. Despite the popularity of Adobe Reader, in my view the best such
program is the free Foxit Reader.

Have you ever tried the Nitro PDF reader? http://www.nitroreader.com/

The couple of times I tried Foxit a couple of years ago, I had issues
with it, went looking for something else, and found Nitro.

In the Foxit install, when it creates a PDF file, does it do it with the
program itself, or does it install a PDF printer driver?



--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.8.3
Firefox 20.0
Thunderbird 17.0.5
LibreOffice 4.0.1.2

 

[Bob Henson]

I know very little about Firefox, and can't help with it, but let me
make a couple of comments about your last sentence

1. Adobe Acrobat is a program that Adobe offers for sale. It gives you
the ability to do two things: create PDF files and read PDF files.

2. The most commonly-used program to read PDF files is the free Adobe
Reader, *not* Adobe Acrobat. It can only read, and not create, PDF
files.

3. Despite the popularity of Adobe Reader, in my view the best such
program is the free Foxit Reader.

Dies it still mangle files when you save them? I recall it used to
insert spaces or names or something of that ilk.

--
Bob - Tetbury, Gloucestershire, UK

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like
a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
- Winston Churchill

 

[Bob Henson]

Thanks, but is there anything to indicate that it is actually downloading, or
that it has finished downloading?


Does that mean I have to download it twice?

Why can't I just save the one already downloaded that is displayed on the
screen?

You can, Steve. Somewhere (I don't use the new version so I can't remember
off hand) there is a button to click on the PDF reader screen (top right
corner on the toolbar - but don't hold me to that, my memory isn't what it
was).

Is there any way of reverting to an earlier version of Firefox that doesn't
have these disimprovements?

Yes. I use version 17.0.5 ESR. The Extended Support Release is intended for
business use where people cannot cope with having unnecessary
"improvements" thrown at them every five minutes - and for people like me
who have been asking Mozilla to stop their ludicrous tinkering and rapid
release cycle for ages. This version has security updates, but nothing
else. The ESR versions come out once per annum, but I think the security
support goes on longer than that. When Firefox reaches versions 24 there
will be a new ESR version 24 too, which will go another year unaltered, but
I will not take it automatically - although I would actually like the built
in pdf reader.

Reverting to 17ESR from a later version may be possible if there have been
no changes in the default profile file formats - but I would do a complete
fresh install - it only takes a few minutes. To do that you need to run the
usual un-install procedure for Firefox. That still leaves the profile
directory behind - you need to remove that too. The directory that needs
deleting varies with the OS, but in Windows 7 it lives at

C:\Users\InsertYourOwnDirectoryName\Appdata\Roaming\Mozilla\firefox\ - just
delete the whole Firefox directory.

Then re-install Firefox 17ESR and update as normal to 17.0.5

17 ESR is at:-

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html

--
Bob
Tetbury, Gloucestershire, England

I went to Waterstones and asked the saleswoman where the "Self Help"
section was. She said if she told me it would defeat the purpose.

 

[Andy Burns]

When Firefox reaches versions 24 there
will be a new ESR version 24 too, which will go another year unaltered, but
I will not take it automatically - although I would actually like the built
in pdf reader.

I found the PDF->HTML5 conversion was slow and scratchy, and it spat the
dummy on some complex PDFs. I soon went back to using an external PDF
viewer (SumatraPDF in my case).

 

[Bob Henson]

I found the PDF->HTML5 conversion was slow and scratchy, and it spat the
dummy on some complex PDFs. I soon went back to using an external PDF
viewer (SumatraPDF in my case).

I haven't used it much , as I said - but if it stays as you describe,
then I shall definitely stay with v.17 ESR - unless they fix it or come
up with another addition that actually improves Firefox rather than just
keeps the devs amused and annoys the hell out of the rest of us.

 

[John K.Eason]

Thanks, but is there anything to indicate that it is actually
downloading, or that it has finished downloading?

The down arrow icon changes to a minute counter with a miniature progress bar
underneath it while a file is downloading, then briefly shows an expanding green
arrow when the download has finished, followed by the arrow icon turning green. You
can also click on the progress icon during the download to show a larger dialog
with progress bar on it and an icon to abort the download.

Does that mean I have to download it twice?

Why can't I just save the one already downloaded that is displayed
on the screen?

I'm guessing here, but I suspect that it renames the temporary file that's already
been downloaded to view the PDF and moves it to the Firefox download directory,
rather than downloading it again.

Is there any way of reverting to an earlier version of Firefox that
doesn't have these disimprovements?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/install-older-version-of-firefox?esab=a&s=previ
ous+versions&r=3&as=s or http://tinyurl.com/c6r3btn for a short link, however
you'll lose the security updates that have been included with the later versions.
Have a look at this:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/find-and-manage-downloaded-files which might
help.

Regards
John ([email protected]) Remove the obvious to reply...

 

[Ken Blake]

Have you ever tried the Nitro PDF reader? http://www.nitroreader.com/

No. If you recommend it, can you tell me why?

The couple of times I tried Foxit a couple of years ago, I had issues
with it, went looking for something else, and found Nitro.

What were the issues? I've never had a problem with it.

In the Foxit install, when it creates a PDF file, does it do it with the
program itself, or does it install a PDF printer driver?

I don't know. I use it just as a PDF reader, and I've never created a
PDF file with it.

 

[Ken Blake]

Dies it still mangle files when you save them? I recall it used to
insert spaces or names or something of that ilk.

I've never seen any problems with Foxit Reader, but I've never saved
files with it either. I use it just as a PDF reader.