A

Anonymous

Question

Problem opening FDF files with Acrobat and Safari

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
June 10, 2009
11 replies
34682 views

Hi,

When I download a FDF file from a website, Safari opens it, which in turn opens Acrobat Professional (8.1.2), then a Security dialog appears asking if I want to allow access to the site. If I click yes, then another dialog pops up asking the same thing. If I tick Remember my action, and click OK, then Safari and Acrobat start flashing quickly until Safari crashes.

Does anyone know why this happens, and what do I need to do to resolve the problem, either with Safari, Acrobat, or on the server?

Thanks,

Joris

This topic has been closed for replies.

C

ChrisAgencyOps

Participant

Anyone have an update on this issue? Running Safari in 32-bit mode isn't an option for me.... none of these workarounds seem to work for XFDF files.

Thnaks

Chris

P

pbrunelle

Participant

Since upgrading Safari, I had the same problem - My easiest fix was to use omniweb browser to open theses files..

http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omniweb/

A

Anonymous

I was having the same issues and saved your post to reference later. After seeing many complaints and sending reports to apple when safari crashed using rosetta in 32 bit....Apple finally seemed to fix it with 10.6.3 as long as safari runs in 32 bit but not using rosetta. I hope this solves this for you!

Mark

A

Alan_Charney

Participant

I'll try it.

Thanks,

Alan

A

Anonymous

I never had this problem (iMac + Safari) until I upgraded to Snow Leopard

(Where double-clicking on an .FDF causes Safari and Acrobat Reader to

flash continously without doing anything useful).

This problem occurs even with the FDF local so it is not an issue with downloading the

FDF from the server.

I found something that works on Mac/Safari -- but not on PC (FF or MSIE).

If I modify the .FDF on the local disk as follows - it works

without issue. This solution does not make sense based on looking

at the FDF specification -- but it works (Safari 4.0.4 6531.21.10 + Snow

Leopard + Acrobat Reader 9.0.0)

Was:

/F (http://www.domainname.com/filename.pdf)

Now:

/URL (http://www.domainname.com)

/F (filename.pdf)

A

Anonymous

upgrade to 10.6.3 and open safari using 32 bit but NOT with rosetta and try it again....

Eric_Goemans

Participant

To open fdf files in Safari or Firefox in Snow Leopard the server sending the fdf info inserted into the Pdf must stream the data correctly. If it is; then we have noticed at our company that it works Safari and Firefox up until Snow Leopard.

Until Apple or Adobe (don't know which is the problem) do a bug fix, you may see certain behaviours. One such behaviour is a nasty recursion where Safari and Adobe reader cycle back and forth endlessly and won't even force quit until you sequester the downloaded file in the trash or restart. This happens when the web site offering up the fdf file is streaming it with out proper headers of mime types.

All the pieces below have to be in place for fdf files to open in a nice friendly way on Safari or Firefox for Mac OSX Snow Leopard. I will include a code snippet in Classic asp as a guide so that other web masters can adjust it to php, perl etc using the appropriate methods for their platform.

In snow leopard:

Safari must be running in 32 bit mode

Firefox must be set to open using Rosetta

(both above accomplished by getting info and checking off the appropriate check box)

Acrobat Reader must be installed

The server serving up the fdf/pdf composite must send it with a header with a file name ending in .fdf! (Those reading below should assume I have already have values for the local string variables below! )

Asp Example:

Set FdfAcX = Server.CreateObject("FdfApp.FdfApp")

set fdf=FdfAcX.FDFCreate

' set some values on the form

fdf.fdfsetvalue "name",lsz_name, false

fdf.fdfsetvalue "city",lsz_fcity, false

fdf.fdfsetvalue "province",lsz_province, false

'set path to pdf template

lsz_pdf_dest="http://"+Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_NAME")+"/myfolder/mypdf.pdf"

fdf.fdfSetFile lsz_pdf_dest

' This part is the part that makes it happen correctly for Mac and Firefox for Mac

Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.fdf;"

Response.AddHeader "Content-Disposition", "inline; filename=somename.fdf"

Response.BinaryWrite fdf.FDFSaveToBuf

fdf.fdfclose

'blah blah blah

Let's hope there is a fix for having to run Safari in 32 bit or Firefox under Rosetta soon, as it is a bit of a kludge to tell users they must set their browser this way to use a website's fdf forms. The above code worked perfectly on previous versions of Mac OSX browsers receiving fdf forms as well. The only hack is under Snow Leopard we have to use 32 bit mode.

Eric

R

rc_griffith

Participant

I am experiencing the same behaviors in the latest releases of both Safari 4 and Firefox on Snow Leopard using both an XFDF and FDF. Has anyone found any kind of solution or work around?

lohm

Participating Frequently

RC,

I found a workaround that will work if you only use the XFDF feature internally (it's too cumbersome to ask external clients to set up their computers this way). Make sure that you have the latest updates from Apple and Adobe, and then run Safari in 32-bit whenever you need to open XFDF forms. The only caveat is that these forms cannot reside in a password protected site since it seems Acrobat doesn't use the authenticated session from the browser and chokes when a password is requested.

Let me know if this tip helps you too.

Luis

R

rc_griffith

Participant

Luis, thank you for the suggestion, that did seem to work. Unfortunately, I need to be able to serve the PDF with the pre-filled fields to a wider audience (University faculty/staff).

I did notice that if you generate the XFDF and set the file attribute (<f href>) to a local file in the same directory as the XFDF, it works like a charm. As soon as you update the attribute to point to a file on http:// somewhere, it does not work at all.

lohm

Participating Frequently

Joris and all,

I have downgraded to Safari 3.2.3 from Safari 4 (final) and that has restored the ability of the Acrobat plug-in to open PDF file references from XFDF files. Here are the steps I took on Leopard to downgrade:

Download the Safari 3.2.3 installer from Apple at:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/application_updates/

The installer will not allow you to install the previous version unless you manually modify the following file:

/System/Library/Frameworks/WebKit.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Info.plist

Modify the file to replace the references of 5530 in CFBundleShortVersionString and CFBundleVersion to 5525. Once you do that, delete or rename the Safari application at:

/Applications/Safari

Finally, run the installer and reboot the computer after installation. This has restored functionality on three systems in which I tried it.

I've searched on Google and it seems like this issue comes up every time Safari undergoes a major upgrade. I'll report it to Adobe and hopefully they can get to the bottom of it. It would be nice if we didn't have to worry about this issue any longer when Safari is upgraded.

Thanks,

Luis

A

Alan_Charney

Participant

My problem is opening .fdf files

I've tried to change the files you mention (from 5530 to 5525) but I get a message telling me I don't have the privileges to do so. I'm the admin account. Can you help me get around this?

I've reinstalled Safari 3.0.4 from the install disk, as suggested by as400 support. It works for the day I install it. When I restart the computer the next day I'm back to the flashing loop between Safari and Adobe. I can reinstall 3.0.4 again and again but that's very tiresome. I'm also stuck on Safari 3.0.4 as any update to 3.2.3 tells me I have a later version installed. Firefox gives me the same loop.

I currently have Adobe 7.0.9 and 9 installed. I deleted Reader 8 and can't seem to replace it on the internet.

I need to open .fdf files from my own company's website. This is very frustrating.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Alan

lohm

Participating Frequently

Alan,

Even though you use an admin account, you need escalated privileges to change system files. You could try to copy the file onto your desktop, modify it, and then copy it back to the original folder. This should ask you for an administrative password to overwrite the file. If it does not allow you to change it this way, you could right-click (or control+click) on the file, choose "Get Info" and under sharing and permissions add your account with read/write permissions.

You will want to make sure the plugin on the browser is using Acrobat 9 and not 7, mostly if you are using an Intel Mac.

Sincerely,

Luis

lohm

Participating Frequently

I'm testing further on a plain install of OS X 10.5 (Leopard). I installed Acrobat Pro 8 without Acrobat Reader. When I upgraded to Safari 4, the issue started happening. It seems to be more of an issue with Safari 4 (final). I wonder if Adobe upgrades the PDF plugin for every browser version. I'll do further testing, but so far it seems to be an incompatibility with Safari 4.

Luis

lohm

Participating Frequently

Joris,

I've had this problem on the Mac for a while, and it seems to occur when you have both Reader and Pro installed. I have an old ticket with Adobe tech support and recently reopened it again (SR 180362266). They were more than happy to test the situation in their labs, but were unable to replicate the same issue we were experiencing. I wonder if it has anything to do with upgrading every time there is a new acrobat release. I've upgraded my Mac from Panther, to Tiger, and then Leopard, and from Acrobat 7, to 8, to 9. I tried uninstalling Pro and Reader and reinstalling one at a time to see if the issue went away, but I still get the same results, flashing back and forth between Safari 4 and Reader when I try to open an XFDF attachment from Entourage. When I download the attachment and try to open it manually, Acrobat calls Safari and then Safari opens the finder window where the file resides. If you figure out any more information, I would greatly appreciate it. Hopefully we will find a solution in this forum.

Thanks,

Luis

Phillip M Jones

Inspiring

Unlike PC where you can not have more than one version of Acrobat/Distiller due to registry files). Mac places any new aplication in its own folder, creates new plist and Preference files and application support folders (and items in them.)

And when updates are run Mac's installers are smart enough to know not to Acrobat 9's components in Acrobat 8.

The only thing that mught conflict its the adobe PdfPrint Driver. In the Past I have known of and experienced Multiple copies of the Driver because the were named the same. What I ended up doing was removing all of them from Printer Utility. Then reinstalling only the latest version from the newest version of Acrobat I had install

C

ChrisIndosoft

Participant

This happens to me as well. I striped my FDF file to contain only the url to the PDF file and I still get the message.

I believe it has something to do with Safari 4 Final and Acrobat since this didn't happen when I had Safari 4 Beta installed. There were no problems.

A

Anonymous

Hi Chris,

That's what I thought too, but I have seen the issue with Safari 3.2.1 as well. Also, I have seen other reports of this behaviour dating back to 2002.

On my Mac I initially had the issue, but some combination of fiddling with the Acrobat browser plugin, changing settings, and restarting, fixed the issue. But doing the same on other Macs in our office does not fix the problem.

At this stage I'm thinking it has something to do with how the FDF file is generated, and am looking into the following:

Mime types sent by the server
Compression on the Server
Crossdomain.xml
Adobe Reader Plugin, and issues arising from having both Acrobat Pro and Reader installed.

Another interesting development is that we don't have this problem for any PCs in our Office, so it is just a Mac issue at this stage.

Phillip M Jones

Inspiring

seems then to be a bug locate the feedback forum and report everything you told someone might be able work it out.

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