Problem opening FDF files with Acrobat and Safari

[Guest]

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

[Phillip M Jones]

What happens if you tick no to the first question?

[Guest]

Hi Phil,

If I tick no, then Acrobat cancels the operations and the PDF does not open.

[ChrisIndosoft]

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.

[Guest]

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]

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

[Guest]

Thanks Phil,

I'm not yet convinced there is a bug, rather it is 'undocumented behaviour' (to use a phrase from the PHB) 😉

I think I'll look into formatting my own FDF file with just a text editor, and see if I can work out where the server generated one is going wrong.

One thing I have noticed is that changing the line endings from Windows to Unix or Mac causes the rapid switching between Acrobat and Safari to cease.

Also, having even if you set Firefox as the default browser on the Mac, Acrobat still launces Safari.

[lohm]

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]

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

[lohm]

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]

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

[Alan_Charney]

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]

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

[rc_griffith]

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]

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

[rc_griffith]

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]

RC,

I work for Ringling College of Art and Design and it seems like we have the same issue. A few years ago we successfully deployed a form for external visitors that would automatically fill a person's name and email address upon login to a web page. This was rather simple to accomplish with XFDF and Acrobat forms; however, as we continued upgrading software, something changed (either from Apple or Adobe) that no longer allows us to do that, so we had to recode the form to an HTML form.

As you add 64-bit into the mix, things seem to get even more complicated. We have opened tickets with both Apple and Adobe. Initially, Adobe was working to resolve the issue with us, but they were never able to replicate it on their end, so we had to close the case. It was strange because I could replicate it on base installs of OS X and Acrobat Reader. Then, we reported an issue with Apple in which the Acrobat plug-in would not even open in the browser. They were working to resolve it and then Snow Leopard came in with 64-bit. Now Adobe has to catch up with Safari 64-bit for their plug-in to work again, and hopefully fix the XFDF issue.

The interesting part is that the XFDF problems have never surfaced on Windows. Since a lot of my users are staff with Windows computers, I have been able to keep most of the XFDF forms I created, but with the rollout of Snow Leopard on our campus for next academic year to the academic world, we will be forced to switch back to HTML forms. It's very sad considering the potential of XFDF forms. A few years ago I had a mandate to convert all web forms to PDF, with XFDF as the central driving force. I was in the middle of developing a form management system centered on XFDF, but with issues like this we cannot put our eggs in this one basket.

Please do let me know if you find alternatives or workarounds, such as the one you already mentioned. I wish Adobe would dedicate someone to work with us again since this is a major issue for business users on OS X.

Thanks,

Luis

[rc_griffith]

Is it just me or does it seem like there is no information about this issue, other than this post. I've been searching high and low for valid examples of using FDF and/or XFDF to pre-fill PDF forms and display the PDF, most date back to pre-Leopard and do not work anymore on OS X.

Luis, I to would love to utilize XFDF, even FDF, to fill out PDF forms based on submissions from an HTML form; but go figure, it does not work for OS X users. We have a PDF that is sent an incrementing counter value and uses javascript to update a specific field, of course, that method does not work for OS X users. So here are two examples where, because of the way PDFs are handled, the dynamic portion of the PDF is basically useless.

[Alan_Charney]

You're right, there is very little available on this issue. I'm

currently using Adobe Reader 9.1.3 with Safari 4.0.4 on OS X 10.5.8

successfully in my office, but still have no success with Snow Leopard

at home. I'm very reluctant to update my office Mac, solely because of

this issue. When Apple went from Safari 2 to Safari 3 this same issue

was resolved within 3 months - I'm hoping this is resolved by them soon.

[lohm]

Alan and RC,

Yes, there is very little information about how to incorporate FDF or XFDF into your apps unless you're using the LiveCycle Suite, let alone information about the issues that can surface with the technology. I think the software is very expensive since it is custom-built depending on the organization's needs. We have approached Adobe several times about a subset of the software specifically made to handle forms, but they never get back to us...probably because our use of it would be very limited to a small portion of the full software. Last time we tried they pointed us to Acrobat.com, but due to privacy issues that's not an option for us. We did mention to them that they should provide a solution for sites that need to host the form submissions, but haven't heard back yet.

At this point my option is to continue using HTML forms until we deploy Microsoft SharePoint, at which point we'll move all forms to that platform. The interesting part is that Acrobat forms and SharePoint will work really well on Windows, but not on the Mac, so even with SharePoint we'll need to use Microsoft's InfoPath or straight SharePoint forms.

Thanks,

Luis

[Eric_Goemans]

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

[Guest]

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)

[Guest]

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

[rc_griffith]

@domaindad

Did you try switching the ordering at all? I wasn't sure if maybe one browser would overlook the /URL attribute, kind of like in CSS.

Sounds like they are making some progress, definitely far from the clear cut, simple solution that should exist.

[rclouder]

@domaindad,

The problem of the flashing safari can be solved by creating the URL in the following way:

https://www.yoursite.com/thePdfFile.pdf#FDF=https://www.yoursite.com/theFdfFile.fdf

This also can be done using servlets that return the pdf and the FDF:

https://www.yoursite.com/pdfServlet?pdfFileId=11111#FDF=https://www.yoursite.com/theFdfServlet?fdfId=121212

Hope this helps