Acrobat 7 and various PDF related Safari bugs

Macintouch report: Acrobat 7

Macintouch had a bunch of reports on PDF dispaly in Safari. Here are some fragments.

• a well regarded plugin that takes care of the problem: http://www.schubert-it.com/pluginpdf/

From Adobe - a whole bunch of workarounds for numerous bugs:

Chris Gulker, Adobe

Here is a recipe that should make Acrobat or Reader 7 show PDFs inside Safari windows (please note that Acrobat/Reader 7 require Safari 1.2.2 or newer on Mac OS 10.3.x):

1. Quit Safari (this is important).
2. Launch Adobe Acrobat 7 or Adobe Reader 7, whatever you want to use within Safari
3. In Acrobat or Reader:
Choose "Preferences..." from the Apple menu item
4. In the Preferences dialog:
Select "Internet" from the list on the left
...if all the items in the top section are disabled, you have Mac OS 10.2.x. Acrobat and Reader do not work inside Safari in 10.2.x.
5. Check (or leave checked) "Display PDF in browser"
Select (or leave selected) the first item in the menu to its right.
6. Click 'OK'
7. Choose "Detect and Repair" from the Help menu
... you should see "Adobe PDFViewer" as one of the options
8. Check (or leave checked) Adobe PDFViewer
9. Click "Continue"
... "missing components were repaired" or
"No missing components detected" should appear.
10. Click "OK"

You should now be set up to see PDFs in the browser. Launch Safari and test.

If it still doesn't work, here are some diagnostics to perform to help figure out where the problem may lie; some have solutions and some would need further investigation:

(1) Make sure Safari thinks our browser plug-in is there and is the only one for handling PDFs

1. Launch Safari
2. In Safari:
3. Choose "Installed Plug-ins" from the Help menu
... you should see a section titled "Adobe Acrobat and Reader Plug-in" - you may need to scroll to find -and it should contain several lines, the most pertinent being:
application/pdf :: Acrobat Portable Document Format :: pdf
... if you don't find this, then somehow the Safari plug-in that is connecting Safari to Acrobat/Reader is not being correctly installed.
4. In that same browser window, Find (command-F) "application/pdf" (no double-quotes). ... you should find *only one* of these, and it should be in the section titled "Adobe Acrobat and Reader Plug-in", in file
"AdobePDFViewer.plugin".
... if you find more than one, then you have another plug-in that is interfering. Delete that other plug-in (then quitting and re-launching Safari) should make PDFs appear in the browser using
Acrobat/Reader -- although I don't recommend deleting a plug-in without first understanding why it's there. Plug-ins are in /Library/Internet Plug-Ins
In that same browser window, Find "pdf"
... you should find several, but they should all be in the section titled "Adobe Acrobat and Reader Plug-in". If you find "pdf" in another section, specifically in the third column of the table under "Extensions", then again you have another plug-in that is interfering with the connection between Safari and Acrobat/Reader (see above).

(2) In Finder, make sure our plug-in exists and isn't duplicated: / Library / Internet Plug-ins / AdobePDFViewer.plugin There should be only one copy of it; there should not be any copies in the following directory:

/ Library / Internet Plug-ins

(3) More advanced: check for errors in the console

1. Quit Safari
2. Launch / Utilities / Console.app
3. In Console:
Command-K to clear the console (this doesn't delete anything in the
actual log: it only temporarily clears the window).
4. Launch Safari
5. In Safari: Navigate to a PDF
... check in the console for error messages that indicate a problem.

(4) Even more advanced: check Acrobat-Safari connection infrastructure

1. In Finder
Right-click on / Safari.app and choose "Show Package Contents"
2. Double-click on "Contents"
... you should see a folder labeled "Frameworks"
3. Double-click on "Frameworks"
... you should see many aliases that start with "Adobe"

We are working to put these procedures in the Adobe support knowledge base.

and a few others:

Very annoying but easily fixed. Go into AcrobatReader 7's prefs/Internet - switch off the use-AR7 Browser Option tick boxes.

Larry Macy
Say What?? Why are these folks having this problem?? Oh Yeah Apple hid this one: In QuickTime Player, open QuickTime Preferences (or From System Preferences), click on the Advanced tab, click on MIME Settings, click on the disclosure triangle for Images - Still image files, scroll down to PDF Image and check it. It is unchecked by default (Why?? Ask Apple). All PDF's will show in Safari just dandy. Been there since 10.3. something.