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Acrobat Reader FAQ

• Installing Acrobat Reader
  
  • How do I install Adobe Reader on Windows?
  • How do I install Acrobat Reader on Linux?
  • How do I install Acrobat Reader on MacOS 9.x?
  • What plugin can I use to display PDFs on MacOS X?
  • How do I install Acrobat Reader on OS/2 Warp?
  • Information for Solaris users
• General Questions
  
  • What MIME Types can the Acrobat plugin handle?
  • Why does Mozilla display garbage or save PDFs to disk when I have the plugin installed?
  • Keyboard shortcuts can not be used when the Acrobat plugin is loaded (full page)
• Windows Issues
  
  • What known issues are there with the Acrobat plugin?
  • Loading PDF files causes Mozilla to hang or crash. What can I do?
  • Adobe Reader 6.0 is terribly slow. How can I speed it up?
  • How can I remove the Acrobat Plugin?
  • I didn't install the Acrobat Plugin for Mozilla, so why is it using it?
• Linux Issues
  
  • Acrobat Reader 5.0.x fails with the message 'Warning: charset "UTF-8" not supported, using "ISO8859-1"'. What can I do?
  • Embedded PDF files do not display when using Adobe Reader 7.0
• Support Resources
  • I have a question that is not answered by this FAQ. Where can I ask it?
  • How do I contribute information to this FAQ?

Installing Acrobat Reader

How do I install Adobe Reader on Windows?

First things first, what version of Adobe Reader do you want? Check the following table:

Windows Version	Best Adobe Reader Version
Windows Server 2003	Adobe Reader 8.0
Windows XP	Adobe Reader 8.0
Windows 2000	Adobe Reader 8.0
Windows NT 4.0 with IE 5.01 or later	Adobe Reader 6.0.2 with 6.0.3, 6.0.4, 6.0.5 and 6.0.6 updates
Windows NT 4.0 without IE 5.01 or later	Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.1
Windows Me	Adobe Reader 6.0.2 with 6.0.3, 6.0.4, 6.0.5 and 6.0.6 updates
Windows 98 Second Edition	Adobe Reader 6.0.2 with 6.0.3, 6.0.4, 6.0.5 and 6.0.6 updates
Windows 98 or older	Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.1

On Windows, simply install Adobe Reader. Mozilla will detect the browser plugin if Adobe Reader is installed, and the Adobe Reader installer will install the plugin automatically if you install Adobe Reader after Mozilla.

If you are upgrading from Adobe Reader 6.0.x to Adobe Reader 7.0, uninstall any updates first, in order of installation, then uninstall Adobe Reader. This will ensure a clean upgrade to 7.0.

How do I install Acrobat Reader on Linux?

To install the Acrobat Reader plugin, copy nppdf.so to your Mozilla plugins directory, and make sure a copy of (or symlink to) the acroread startup script is in your PATH.

 Adobe Reader 7.0 includes a script for installing the browser plugin, although it is not run by default when you install it. If you installed Adobe Reader 7.0 to the default location, this script is at the following location:

/usr/local/Adobe/Acrobat7.0/Browser/install_browser_plugin

 All users should upgrade to Acrobat Reader 7.0.9, as earlier versions of Acrobat Reader have security issues.

[Download Adobe Reader 7.0.9 (Tarball)] [Download Adobe Reader 7.0.9 (RPM)]

How do I install Acrobat Reader on MacOS 9.x?

Simply install Adobe Acrobat Reader. The plugin is automatically installed in the Internet Plug-ins folder in your System Folder.

[Download Acrobat Reader 5.1 (Monolithic)]

What plugin can I use to display PDFs on MacOS X?

On MacOS X, You will need the PDF Browser Plugin, which is available from Schubert it. To install it, do the following:

1. Download PDF Browser Plugin.
2. Mount the disk image.
3. Copy the PDF Browser Plug in to your Internet Plug-ins folder.

Note: This plugin is only free for non-commercial usage. Commercial usage requires purchasing a license. See the product page for more information.

[Download PDF Browser Plugin]

How do I install Acrobat Reader on OS/2 Warp?

To install the Acrobat Plugin on OS/2 Warp, Install Acrobat Reader, then copy nppdfos2.dll to your browser's plugins directory.

[Download Acrobat Reader 3.0]

Information for Solaris users

Note: This information contributed by Clark Frazier Hale

This works with Mozilla 1.4 from SUN, and Acrobat Reader 5.0.9.

Simply creating a link to nspdf.so in the plug-in directory does not allow Acrobat to operate, as it has a dependency in libXm.so. nspdf.so is not linked to libXm.so (This is a dumb vestige from Netscape 4), so the mozilla startup script does not preload the library. The work-around is something like this:

$ LD_PRELOAD=libXm.so mozilla

However, under Solaris 9 (and perhaps Solaris 8), libXm.so is not in the default path for trusted libraries, and thus the linker won't load it. The solution for this would be to add /usr/lib to the secure search path, via clre command.

# crle -s /usr/lib/secure:/usr/lib

And if one has a UltraSPARC:

# crle -s /usr/lib/secure/64:/usr/lib/64

Changing the trusted library path could be a potential security risk. I'm not really going to worry about it on a Workstation, though.

Voila, Acrobat now works in Mozilla.

General Questions

What MIME Types can the Acrobat plugin handle?

Acrobat Reader 5.1 and earlier only handle application/pdf.

Adobe Reader 6.0 and later can handle the following MIME Types:

• application/pdf
• application/vnd.fdf
• application/vnd.adobe.xfdf
• application/vnd.adobe.xdp+xml
• application/vnd.adobe.xfd+xml

Why does Mozilla display garbage or save PDFs to disk when I have the plugin installed?

Unfortunately, some web servers send PDF files with an incorrect MIME Type. When this happens, Mozilla simply handles them how it would handle other files which have the MIME Type it is given, which means displaying it as test (for text/plain) or saving it to disk (application/octet-stream).

Note: Mozilla Firefox includes a fix that makes it handle most invalid text/plain files as application/octet-stream, so it shouldn't display garbage if a PDF is sent as text/plain.

Keyboard shortcuts can not be used when the Acrobat plugin is loaded (full page)

This is a known problem with all plugins, not just the Acrobat plugin. There are several bugs filed on this issue. [Bug List]

Windows Issues

What known issues are there with the Acrobat plugin?

Using Adobe Reader 6.0 on Windows, you may encounter the following problems:

• You may not be able to print PDF documents from Mozilla Firefox if you have Adobe Reader 6.0 installed. [Bug 207417]
• Mozilla Firefox may hang or crash when navigating away from a PDF file or closing a window where a PDF is being displayed when Adobe Reader 6.0 is being used. [Bug 217137]
• If you have not accepted the Adobe Reader EULA, you have to minimize your browser to see it.

Acrobat Reader 5.1 does not have these issues, and may be used as a workaround. Adobe Reader 7.0 has no known major issues.

Loading PDF files causes Mozilla to hang or crash. What can I do?

If you are having problems with Adobe Reader, the following troubleshooting steps may help.

• Upgrade to the latest version of Acrobat Reader
• Upgrade to the latest Mozilla release
• Install Internet Explorer 5.0.1 SP2 or later
• Turn off "Allow Fast Web View" in the Adobe Reader preferences
• Turn off "Allow Background Downloading" in the Adobe Reader preferences
• Disable the plugin completely, and open PDF files with Acrobat Reader

Adobe Reader 6.0 is terribly slow. How can I speed it up?

Adobe Reader 7.0 is much faster than Adobe Reader 6.0.x, so if you're using Windows 2000 or later, the first thing to try is upgrading to Adobe Reader 7.0.

Adobe Reader 6.0 can be dreadfully slow. You can speed it up by disabling unused Adobe Reader plugins. To do this, move all files and folders that are in the Adobe Reader plug_ins folder to the Adobe Reader optional folder, except for the following:

• eBook.api
• EWH32.api
• Search.api

It has been reported that without the additional plugins, Adobe Reader can start up in as little as 15% of the original startup time. If you need functionality provided by other plugins, simply copy them back from the optional folder to the plug_ins folder.

In addition, you can disable the splash screen and checking for updates in the Startup section of the Adobe Reader Preferences.

How can I remove the Acrobat Plugin?

Delete the file named nppdf32.dll from your Mozilla Firefox plugins folder. You may have to enable showing hidden files to do this.

I didn't install the Acrobat plugin for Mozilla, so why is it using it?

Mozilla's plugin scanning is locating another copy of the Acrobat plugin, using either the Acrobat plugin scan, or the Netscape 4.x plugin scan.

 Mozilla configuration files may need to be edited with a text editor that supports Unix line endings, such as Wordpad. Do not use Notepad to edit configuration files.

To disable the Acrobat plugin scan, open \default\pref\winpref.js, and comment the following line by adding // to the start.

pref("plugin.scan.Acrobat", "5.0");

To disable the Netscape 4.x plugin scan, open \default\pref\winpref.js, and uncomment the following line by removing the //.

//pref("plugin.scan.4xPluginFolder", false);

Note that this will prevent any plugins from being detected using the Netscape 4.x plugin scan, not just the Acrobat plugin. More information about plugin scanning.

Note: In recent Mozilla builds, you will need to edit \greprefs\all.js instead of \default\pref\winpref.js.

Linux Issues

Acrobat Reader 5.0.x fails with the message 'Warning: charset "UTF-8" not supported, using "ISO8859-1"'. What can I do?

The solution to this problem varies by distribution. In each case, you will need to edit /usr/local/Acrobat5/bin/acroread as root, and add the following text below the first two lines of the file:

ReadHat 8.0 or later

LANG=en_US
export LANG

Mandrake 9.x

LC_CTYPE=C
export LC_CTYPE

Embedded PDF files do not display when using Adobe Reader 7.0

It has been reported that PDF files embedded in web pages will not display when using the Adobe Reader 7.0 browser plugin, due to it not passing the correct options to acroread.

Support Resources

I have a question that is not answered by this FAQ. Where can I ask it?

If you have a question that is not covered here, please search the MozillaZine forums to see if the problem has been mentioned before. If it hasn't, and the information contained in this FAQ and PluginDoc doesn't help, by all means post to the MozillaZine Forums.

How do I contribute information to this FAQ?

If you wish to contribute information to this FAQ, send an e-mail to Michael Hendy.