Hi. First time poster to the BOB.
We are running WebI on a Solaris 8 box. The WebI version is 2.7.3 with the following CSPs 722, 751, 760, and 761. We set all user profiles to view reports as PDF. We have customers that have been upgraded to Win2K, Netscape 7, and Adobe Reader 6 from NT4, Netscape 4.76, and Adobe Reader 5. They have recently noticed some behavior that may be related to WebI. I thought I’d post here to see if anyone else has experienced the same thing. Everything seems to work fine until the user tries to use the “Search” feature in the Adobe Reader browser plug-in. The search acts as though it is working correctly but returns 0 (zero) results even though the word being searched for is in the report. I had the user save the report as PDF to their desktop and search again using the Adobe Reader application. It returned the correct results. Additionally, I tested viewing a document from WebI with Internet Explorer 6 and Adobe Reader 6 and did not experience the problem. Trying to rule things out, I tested that the Search feature of the Adobe Reader browser plug-in worked as it should for other PDF documents (outside of WebI). Has anyone seen this happen? Any ideas as to what could be causing it? Yes it works ok for IE but our users prefer Netscape.
I’ve never seen that before, the only thing that comes to mind is the versions. Adobe 6 is relatively new, 2.7.3 isn’t…might be worth a look at the version 5 PAR for 2.7.3 and netscape - just to see if this is fully supported on Solaris 8?
Nick:
On the versions of browsers, no Netscape 7 is not listed in the PAR for SP7 but it seems to work ok. No version of Netscape is listed for Win2K SP3 for browser OS for SP7. Netscape 7.0.2 for Solaris 8 server and Win2K browser OS is listed for SP8. We didn’t want to upgrade to SP8 and were wating for E6.5.
Anita:
As for the version of Adobe Acrobat, we are running 6.0.0 dated 5/19/2003. I work for the government so it takes some time to get new versions of software. I doubt that we will get 6.0.1 anytime soon unless I can point to something that says 6.0.1 (or 6.0.2) will fix the problem.
I do not know what bugs were fixed in 6.0.1 – but I know that our production systems insist that all users upgrade Acrobat Reader to that version, because 6.0 vanilla was very buggy and caused problems. Perhaps you can check out a bug list on Adobe – but I think it’s not unusual for a .0 version to be pretty buggy and need a service pack to make it more stable.
It should be a free upgrade – it’s not a new version, but a set of bug-fixes.
I have seen this problem too. I created a program to run entirely from a CD, in which PDF documents are displayed within a frame under Netscape 7.1.
All PDF documents were created using PDF-XChange 3.0. Those created prior to my running Adobe Reader 6.x give results when searched.
Those created later give zero results when searched within that Netscape frame, but give results when searched for the same word with Reader running stand-alone. None of the recently created files contains an Adobe ID number.
I’ve contacted Tracker Software (who produce PDF-XChange) and they claim the problem is not with their software, as the PDF files they produce are searchable successfully with Reader 6.x running stand-alone. I’m inclined to agree with them, and have submitted a bug report to Adobe. Unfortunately, Adobe does not reply to bug reports, nor does Netscape.
I’ve tried going back to Adobe Reader 5.x, but find that it will not run within a frame. I would very much like to find a solution to this problem.
Subsequent to posting my previous message I’ve done a bit more investigating. I find that searches by Adobe Reader 6.x work perfectly well within frames under Internet Explorer 6.x, but continue to fail in frames under Netscape 7.x.
I’ve submitted a bug report to Netscape, but they are notorious for not replying.
I also submitted a bug report to Adobe, and received a reply only a short time ago, requesting more information, and a copy of a PDF file that fails. I have sent that reply, along with a failing PDF file, and the HTML code that I use to launch the PDFs. I am very hopeful that Adobe’s people will be able to identify the source of the failure, and perhaps even suggest a solution.
For those of you who have seen this issue, I suggest that you make the following inspection of your PDF files that are failing. Open a failing file using WordPad. Scroll to the bottom of the file and check for the presence of an ID number. It will be in the form of a line reading “ID [<a 32-digit alpha-numeric grouping><another, identical 32-digit grouping>]”. I’ve found that all of my failing PDFs lack an ID number.
I’ll pass along anything more that I discover, or receive from the various vendors.
Thanks for the new information. I would appreciate seeing anything more that you discover, or receive from the various vendors.
Additionally, we have indentified two more problems that may be attributable to the Adobe Acrobat 6.0.0 verison but we still have not been able to get the updates to verify. 6.0.2 is the latest but you also need 6.0.1 to load 6.0.2. We see hollow rectangles in areas where the data should be null or blank and we are having a lot of printing problems.
If we are able to get in the new versions and verify one way or the other, I will post here to let you know.
(BOB member since 2002-08-15)
(BOB member since 2002-06-17)
(BOB member since 2002-06-17)